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KORNO SiGA, 

THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF; 

OR, 

LIKB IN ASSAM. 



BY 



Mrs. MILDRED 'mARSTON. f-^?..v..-L- 






V 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE HON. JABS M. HOYT. 



-■,' o- 



'0/Vq, 



I SFP 191889 



philadelphia : 
The American Sunday-School Union, 

1122 Chestnut Street. 



NEW YOEK: 8 AND 10 BIBLE HOUSE. 



AFFECTIONATET.Y DEDICATED TO 

MY CHILDREN; 

WHO DURING ALL THE YEARS OF MY WIDOWHOOD HAVE 
BEEN BEAUTIFULLY LOYAL TO THEIR 

father's memory, 

AND TO 

THEIR MOTHER. 



[Copyright by The American Sunday-School Union, 1889.] 

(3) 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface 7 

CHAPTER I. 
How IT Came About that I Went to India . 9 

CHAPTER 11. 
I AWAIT the Openings of Providence . . 21 

CHAPTER III. 
Our Voyage to India 28 

CHAPTER IV. 

Assam and the Assamese 38 

CHAPTER V. 

The Hill Tribes of Assam . . . .50 

CHAPTER VI. 
Our Mountain Home 56 

CHAPTER VII. 

KoRNO SiGA, the Mountain Chief . . . 66 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Serving a Priest for Eternal Life . . 72 

CHAPTER IX. 
Earthquakes and White Ants ... 79 

CHAPTER X. 

An Assamese Fairy Tale 88 

(5) 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XL page 

KORNO SiGA AS A StUDENT . . . .92 

CHAPTER XII. 
KoRNO Siga's Bride 98 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Snake Charmers and Royal Bengal Tigers . 109 

CHAPTER XIY. 
KoRNO SiGA Becomes a Chief . . . .122 

CHAPTER XV. 
Hashish, Opium, and Brandy . . . .128 

CHAPTER XYI. 

KORNO SiGA AND THE THIBETAN BUDDHIST . 136 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Tea Cultivation, and Other Industries of 
Assam 149 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
A Day of Darkness 157 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Light in the Darkness 167 

CHAPTER XX. 
Woman's Work tor Wojian . . . .172 

CIIAPTKR XXL 
Homeward Bound 179 

CHAPTER XXII. 
Impressions of Ameuica after an Absence of 
Years 193 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Why Return to Assam? 201 



PREFACE. 



A PERSONAL acquaintance for many years 
with the author of this book, gives me full 
warrant to assure its readers that its recitals of 
missionary life and experience may be implicitly 
accepted as true. 

The volume is not an imaginative portraiture of 
characters and events, said — in the ordinary phrase 
— to be "founded on fact/' but it portrays from 
actual life the facts of missionary labor and expe- 
rience as they occurred. The sole exception to strict 
verity is that the persons acting appear under as- 
sumed instead of their real names. For this sub- 
stitution there were in the view of the author valid 
reasons : First ; that as an active participant, yet 
living, in the labors, dangers, trials, sorrows, joys 
and spiritual achievements portrayed, the narrator 
would be thus shielded from what might, otherwise^ 
be deemed undue self-assertion. Second, and more 
important ; as a missionary of ripe experience the 
author could not otherwise present, with the warm 
commendation justly deserved, the noble and pre- 
cious fruits and attainments seen in the lives of 

(7) 



8 PREFACE. 

converts from heathen degradation to the purity 
and liberty y/herewith Christ had made them free, 
without hazard of possible spiritual injury to some 
still living in the field referred to who might be 
unduly elated by such public praise. 

For these reasons I take pleasure in presenting 
for my friend this explanatory preface ; a pleasure, 
also, heightened by my estimate of the rare value 
of the narrative itself. As an earnest of its prac- 
tical usefulness I add that my own heart, I trust, 
has been quickened by it to renewed and deeper 
interest in Christian missions to the heathen. 

The recital in this narrative of God's call to a 
missionary life in heathen lands, and the thought- 
ful, prayerful, and at length loyal response to that 
call, and the precious spiritual results ensuing, sig- 
nally verify the beautiful recognition of a divine 
overruling in the psalm of AVhittier : 

" That more and more a Providence 
Of love is understood, 
Making the springs of time and sense 
Sweet with eternal good." 

James ]\I. Hoyt. 
Cleveland, 0., Aug. 12, 1889. 



KOENO SIGA, 

THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 



CHAPTER I. 

HOW IT CAME ABOUT THAT I WENT TO INDIA. 

FOR several years my children have been urging 
me to write the story of my life in India. 
But as I am no writer, and have all my life been 
a hard-working woman in other fields save that of 
literature, I have hesitated much before undertak- 
ing this task. I have consoled myself, however, 
with the thought that the little book may be of 
interest to my children and personal friends, even 
though it is never so fortunate as to appear in 
print. 

When I was quite a little girl, I thought a great 
deal about the people of that far-off land. My 
father was a great reader and a cosmopolitan, 
though he was a farmer and had never travelled 
beyond the confines of the United States of Amer- 
ica. He used to talk with me about the books he 

(9) 



10 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

read and tell me most interesting stories of the 
strange peoples in foreign countries. And I al- 
ways was especially interested in the people of 
India. 

My father was an earnest Christian man and 
deeply interested in the civilization and Christian- 
ization of the peoples of the earth, and I can never 
forget the stories he told me of Xavier, Marshman, 
Carey and Judson. And I would sit for hours 
wondering about all these things. As I grew older 
I read everything I could find about the people of 
India, and when I learned how ignorant and un- 
happy the women and children were, I wondered 
if it would ever be in my power to help them and 
in any way to better their condition. 

At times I fancied myself embarking for " In- 
dia's coral strand,^' and in imagination saw my 
relatives and friends bidding me a tearful farewell 
as I left them to sail away over the seas. IMany a 
time did I go into my mother's bed-room and bolt 
the door, and softly sing to myself an old hymn 
which I found in my mother's Psalmist : 

" Yes, my native land, I love thee, 
All thy scenes I love them well ; 
Friends, connections, happy country, 
Can I leave them far in heathen lands to dwell ? 
Yes, I hasten from tliee gladly ; 
Lovely native land, farewell." 

The years of my childhood passed rapidly and 



HOW IT CAME THAT I WENT TO INDIA. 11 

happily away, and at the age of eleven I entered 
the academy of my native town, still hoping that 
the time might come when I could make my home 
in India. My eldest brother, who was my teacher 
in the academy, took much interest in my intel- 
lectual development, and it was a sad loss to me 
when he fell a victim to cholera on the 18th of 
July, 1851. 

My next teacher was a much-beloved pastor, in 
whose judgment I had great confidence. During 
the winter following my brother's death a new 
minister, who was candidating for a church, talked 
to the children of our Sunday-school on Sunday at 
the close of the session. His words made a deep 
and lasting impression upon me, and I well re- 
member these words as he urged the children one 
and all to " seek the Saviour early ; " for the prom- 
ise was, that all such should find him. After the 
Sunday-school closed I heard the deacons and 
other members of the church criticising my good 
minister, and calling him ^^poky.'' One of the 
deacons remarked, that such a stupid man would be 
obliged to travel a long distance before he would 
find a church that would settle him as their pastor. 
And all the while my young heart was pleading 
for him as the one minister that had spoken words 
more forcible and impressive than all others. I 
have never seen that so-called "poky" man from 
that day to this, but if I am ever permitted to look 



12 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

upon his face in a better world, where none are 
"poky," and where poor ministers do not have to 
go around candidating for churches which cruelly 
criticise them, I shall take his hand and tell him 
that he was the means of leading me out of nature's 
darkness into the sweet light of a faith in a risen 
Christ. Moreover, I shall tell him that the sheaves 
I have gathered in India and elsewhere, have all 
come from the seed he sowed long ago in that lit- 
tle country Sunday-school, where the deacons 
all thought he would never do any good. 

When I was about seventeen years old, and just 
before I left the academy, my teacher urged upon 
me the importance of the study of the Greek lan- 
guage, and gave me to understand that he thought 
I would need it very much some day in trans- 
lating languages in foreign countries. I was 
much surprised that he should have thought of 
such a future for me, for I had never told him of 
what my thoughts had been with reference to this 
subject. Indeed, I was very reluctant that any 
one should know I had thought of going to India, 
for I had become acquainted with a young man 
who interested me more than did the people of In- 
dia. He w^as handsome, good and intelb'gent, and 
by the time I was nineteen years old had succeeded 
in convincing me that it was more important that 
I should look after his physical and spiritual well- 
being than that I should go on an Indian mission, 



HOW IT CAME THAT I WENT TO INDIA. 13 

and scatter my efforts among the Hindoos. He 
being present to urge his claims, got the better of 
the poor East Indians in the argument ; for they, 
poor things, were far away in the jungles eating 
grasshoppers and chewing the betel-nut. And so 
I promised Theodore Osborne that I would be his 
wedded wife provided I could quit thinking it to 
be my duty to go to India. He said he would 
take me to our western frontier and give me a 
chance to work for the North American Indians, 
if I must work for Indians of some kind, and thus 
I could at the same time make him supremely 
happy. In order to satisfy conscience fully, which 
by the way has always been a very troublesome 
part of my organization, I made a solemn vow be- 
fore my God that if I ever had a son I would 
name him either Carey or Judson, and train him 
from his earliest infancy to be a missionary to 
India. "And a man can do immeasurably more 
good than a woman, and hence this plan will be 
far better than if I went myself,^ ^ I argued with 
my conscience. There were times when I would 
be intensely angry at this Indian question for con- 
tinually presenting itself to me. I did not see 
why the other girls of my acquaintance should not 
be treated to an occasional dose of it. They never 
seemed to be burdened with such a thought, and 
could love and wed whom they chose. 

During the summer of 1859 I bade my intended 
2 



14 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF, 

husband a brief farewell, and. went with a dearly 
loved sister to visit our uncle's family in the north- 
ern part of our State. There we had a most 
delightful visit with our young cousins and friends. 
We scoured the country for caves and natural 
curiosities generally, and spent pleasant days in 
fishing and hunting. 

One Sunday morning a large and gay company 
of us went to a rude little church in the woods. 
We had been having a very hilarious time as we 
drove through the grand old forest, and I was in 
no reverent nor devotional frame of mind as I 
entered the church. Indeed, if I must tell the 
whole truth, I had shunned churches for months, 
fearing that I might hear something there that 
would cause my conscience again to clamor for the 
East Indians. How well I remember saying to 
myself as I ascended the churcli steps that morn- 
ing : " Well, I shall not hear anything about 
foreign missions here : it is too far out in the 
woods for them to know or care anything about 
India.'' 

The preacher was a young man of about thirty 
years, a professor of Latin in a neighboring college, 
of prepossessing personal appearance and withal a 
fine scholar. So absorbed was I, however, in my 
own reflections that I did not observe him until he 
announced his text : ^' Go ye into all the world, 
and preach the gospel to every creature," etc. 



HOW IT CAME THAT I WENT TO INDIA. 15 

Every word of that sermon went to my heart, and 
after this long lapse of years I can recall sentence 
after sentence, which seemed intended for me per- 
sonally. From that moment my old convictions 
returned with double power, and I was compelled 
to reconsider the subject and have it out with my 
conscience. I almost wished that I had been born 
without a conscience. I dared not tell any one of 
the fearful mental struggle through which I was 
passing, and though I frequently met the young 
preacher, I did not deem it wise to unburden my 
heart to him. I was glad when our visit came to 
an end and we turned our faces homeward. My 
sister often asked me why I was so sad and self- 
absorbed, but I gave her no clue to my thoughts. 
The young minister and a cousin of ours went with 
us to our home, and it certainly was not for want 
of agreeable society that I was silent. As soon as 
I reached home I resolved that I would honestly 
decide this subject. I wrote to my former pastor 
and teacher, describing my condition by quoting 
the first three verses of the sixty-ninth Psalm. I 
asked him to tell me what I ought to do ; could it 
be right for me to break an engagement with Mr. 
Osborne, when by so doing my heart would be 
broken in twain ? My pastor's letter in reply I 
have before me now. It was a great help and 
comfort to me. It begins thus : 

"Amid the changing scenes of this fleeting life 



16 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

it is a comfort to God's children to know tliat his 
loving kindness never fails them;" and then it 
goes on to say how safe it is always to follow a 
conscience enlightened by God's Spirit, and that 
those who are thus led shall lack for no good 
thing. How much more those words mean to me 
now than they did then ! I have tested them and 
found them true. To make my story as short as 
possible, I will only add that I resolved in a few 
days after receiving this letter that I would tell 
Mr. Osborne all about the experience through 
which I had passed, and ask him as a Christian 
man what he thought I ought to do. Had I not 
been aided by an unseen Power I think I never 
could have borne up during that trying ordeal. It 
nearly broke my heart to see my beloved so sorely 
grieved as he was, when he found that I still felt 
that I had a personal work to do in a distant land 
which would involve a separation from him. But 
in the midst of his sorrow this nol)le man was 
strong enough to say : Mildred, you must follow 
the path of duty without reference to me, even 
though my disappointment should kill me. I have 
no sense of personal duty to the heathen ; you have, 
and God and your own conscience must decide 
your course of conduct. But I would like to ask 
you one question : has that minister who preached 
the sermon in that country church from the text, 
" Go ye into all the world,'' etc., got anything to 



HOW IT CAME THAT I WENT TO INDIA. 17 

do with your present state of mind ? Is he going 

as a foreign missionary ? I assured him that the 

minister had long been engaged to my cousin, and 

tliat he had not the shghtest idea of going as a 

missionary. Moreover that if he were not engaged, 

and if he Avere going to India, I should never go 

with him but should go out single and as a teacher, 

if I went at all. This assurance seemed to relieve 

his mind, and he said that he thouglit that much 

of my mental agitation about it being my duty, 

arose from a nervous condition, and that he had 

but little doubt I would give up India when I 

had fully rested from my journey and Avas once 

quietly settled down to life with him. 

On the Sunday following this conversation I 

took my Bible and shut myself in my room that I 

might seek guidance from the All-Father, in this 

important matter. I had reached a point when I 

was almost desperate, and there was no earthly 

being who seemed able to help me in making a final 

decision. Very solemnly impressed was I that my 

whole future happiness and usefulness depended 

upon the course I now took. 

" There is a time we know not when, 
. A point we know not where, 
That marks the destiny of man 
To glory or despair." 

An old proverb says : " To everything there is 



a season.^^ 



2* 



18 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

Shakespeare words the sarae thought somewhat 
differently : 

" There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries." 

And I felt most sensibly that such a time had 
come in my own life. For hours I remained in 
agony of grief and perplexity that I had never be- 
fore experienced. I could not turn my heart away 
from him whose love was my highest earthly joy. 
I could not get strength of will to say ; " Thy will, 
O God, be done." And so I wrestled and prayed 
for guiding wisdom until a superhuman strength 
and calmness seemed to come to me which enabled 
me to say : " I can do all things through Christ 
which strengtheneth me." Phil. 4 : 13. 

I opened my Bible with an earnest desire that 
the first sentence upon which my eyes should rest 
might tell me plainly my duty. Judge of my 
surprise Avhen a clause of the twentieth verse of 
the fourth chapter of Lamentations met my gaze : 
"Under his shadow we shall live among; the 
heathen." The word "Under" begins with a 
capital and the sentence is complete in itself I 
had never before noticed the sentence, and it 
seemed to me almost like a revelation from 
heaven. At any rate it was the means by which 



ROW IT CAME THAT I WENT TO INDIA. 19 

I positively decided to prepare myself for work in 
India, provided the way should ever open for me 
to go there. 

In less than a month from this time, I was in a 
distant city attending college and pursuing those 
very studies which my good pastor and teacher 
had years before urged upon me. I did not see 
Theodore Osborne again until after he was happily 
married to one who was in every w^ay better suited 
to him than ever I could have been. Although 
we thought when we plighted our troth that no 
two people ever loved as we did, I am sure that 
the depths of my heart's affection had never been 
touched with the tender passion, and that he and I 
each learned afterwards to love another person far 
more than we had loved each other. 

And I was happier from this time than I had 
been during those years when I carried a self- 
accusing conscience and a smothering of personal 
obligation to my Master and his needy children in 
India. Far better was it, to follow the leadings 
of the Spirit, and trust to an all-wise Father to 
right the error I had made in making a Avrong 
promise and selling my birthright. It is the duty 
of individuals as well as of nations to be true to 
their highest destiny. But many of Mr. Os- 
borne's friends and some of my own, censured me 
severely for the course I then took. Some called 
me an unbalanced enthusiast ; others said I was a 



20 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

crank and a fanatic, and that " I would see the 
day when I would give my head to have the love 
of such a man as Theodore Osborne ; he was a 
hundred times too good for me anyhow." My 
own dear relatives, however, were in full sym- 
pathy with me and bade me a hearty " God-speed " 
as I went away to college. 

When I returned home after graduating in my 
course of study, the way had not opened for me 
to go to India, and I joined my sister in teaching 
a private school, and became deeply interested 
in the progress of our pupils, who were a delight- 
ful class of about forty young ladies. My pastor's 
wife, ever a true friend to me, Avrote in my behalf 
to the headquarters of missionary operations for 
our church, and told them of my desire to go as a 
teacher to India ; and the good old secretary, w^ho 
has long since gone to a better world, wrote in 
reply : " I can only bid the young lady to await 
the openings of Providence." 

" There are some gifts that Heaven denies 

More blest withheld than richly given ; 
There are some storms that darkly rise, 
More blest than all the cloudless skies 

That make another's earthly heaven. 
We know not till the middle day, 

What tokens best befit the dawn ; 
The clouds that weep our morn away 
Fit oft, for heaven's serenest ray, 

When the full strength of life comes on." 



CHAPTER II. 

I AWAIT THE OPENINGS OF PEOVIDENCE. 

I CONTINUED teaching in my sister's school^ 
but all the while I was awaiting the openings 
of Providence. 

Once I thought the door open for me, and set 
about an outfit for a residence in India. A lady 
of much experience in educational work in India 
offered me a position as teacher in one of her 
schools there, and Avished me to sail at once. My 
father, more wise and cautious than I, insisted 
upon a thorough investigation of the lady's mental 
condition. From her letters to me, he had gained 
an evidence of what he thought a vagarious state, 
and he even suspected incipient insanity. And so 
he bade me wait a year before sailing, assuring me 
that if at the end of that time my estimable patron 
proved to be compos mentis he would offer no 
further objections. Meanwhile he made a most 
diligent and searching investigation, and found 
that several of her ancestors had been insane, and 
that tAvo members of her family besides herself 
were hovering on the border land. Before the 
end of the year she was unmistakably insane and 

(21) 



22 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF, 

thus a door closed, instead of an opening of Provi- 
dence, confronted me, and those who had regarded 
me as a crank, now hoped I would be cured of my 
wild notions and settle down at home like a sen- 
sible girl. I was now twenty-two years old, and 
though I was in haste to be on my way, I knew 
that even if I was delayed several years I should 
still be young enough to hope for many years' 
work in India. I never seemed to doubt but that 
I had a work to do there, and I felt sure that the 
Lord of the vineyard would see tliat I got there 
in his own good time and way. I continued teach- 
ing and was happy in my work. 

And now there came to me a strange letter 
from one whom I had never seen. I copy it 
here: 

"Miss Mildred Prescott: 

"Dear Madam: — The accompanying note of introduction 
from the pen of an old friend of yours may be deemed a suf- 
ficient apology for what might otherwise be quite intrusive. 
You may have noticed my name connected with an appoint- 
ment to work as a missionary in foreign lands. I have for 
over a year had the pleasure of a somewhat intimate acquaint- 
ance with your former pastor's wife, being permitted to enjoy 
her hearty co-operation in most valuable labor and advice 
during a revival of religion last winter. During conversa- 
tions with her she has several times incidently spoken of you, 
and your adaptation to such a work as I have chosen. You 
will permit me, therefore, without further introduction, to pro- 
pose the object of this note, trusting that no offence will be 
taken, however the proposition may be considered or strange 



I AWAIT THE OPENINGS OF PROVIDENCE. 23 

it may appear. My interrogatory proposition is this : Is your 
devotion to our common Master's cause, its interest and ex- 
tension, and your love for the heathen deep and strong enough 
to prompt you to leave hallowed associations, to forsake the 
protection and company of long-tried and well-loved friends, 
and commit yourself to the protection and confide in the 
fidelity of a comparative stranger in a distant land of labor 
and trial, and doubtless of privation, and perhaps persecu- 
tion? 

"If thus you judge after mature reflection, and can consent 
to the general proposition, you will allow me to make it more 
specific and personal by referring you to the following gen- 
tlemen : 

[Here follows a long list of D.D. and LL.D. worthies.] 
" If after such investigation as you think necessary, you shall 
choose to return to me a favorable reply to the general propo- 
sition, and to so much of that relating to me personally as 
may be done without committing yourself, it will give me pleas- 
ure with your consent to visit you in a few weeks, when, by a 
personal interview, the question can assume a more tangible 
form. I am not unmindful that this is a most momentous 
proposal if considered affirmatively, and it has only been 
after much thought and earnest prayer, that I have dared to 
enter upon a transaction which involves such interests not 
only to the parties concerned, but also to the kingdom of 
Christ. Whether the finger of Providence has pointed me to 
you or not, must be confirmed by the direction he shall point 
you. I will simply add that the time is short. I am to sail 
for India next June, but missionaries should be ' minute men,' 
should they not? May I hope to hear from you as soon as 
deliberate thought shall render a deliberate decision ? 

" Yours truly, 

"Henry C. Marston." 

Strange letter this, and it required days of re- 
flection before I reached a " deliberate decision." 



24 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

I was very strongly prejudiced against a marriage 
for the sake of convenience, and most of all it 
seemed to me that a marriage made for the sake of 
getting a chance to go as a missionary was the 
veriest sacrilege. One of my college classmates 
had become the fifth wife of an old missionary in 
China, and when he had proposed to her he had 
asked her if she ^^ was willing to lay herself on the 
altar of missions." I was so disgusted with her 
for becoming the fifth sacrifice of that kind that I 
vowed I would preach against such immolation as 
long as I had power to speak. Personally, I 
must know and love the man I married for his 
own intrinsic worth. What a terrible thing it 
would be to marry a man because he was a mis- 
sionary, and find after I got to India that I despised 
him ! I wrote to the friend who gave Mr. Marston 
the note of introduction to me and asked her all 
manner of questions as to his mental and moral 
excellence, and her reply was certainly all that I 
could desire. I did not write to any of those 
D.D.'s and LL.D's. What did they know about 
the kind of a husband that w^ould suit me ? They 
might commend him to me, because they wanted 
him to sail soon for India. 

The letter Avhich I Avrote to Mr. Marston is 
before me now written in a cramped school-girl 
hand which I discarded more than a score of years 
ago. It reads thus : 



/ AWAIT THE OPENINGS OF PROVIDENCE. 25 

"Key. Henry C. Marston: 

"Dear Sir : — Yours of the 9th of March came duly to hand. 
I have perhaps delayed longer in the answering of it than I 
should, considering how soon you must sail for India. The 
proposition is one of such vital interest to the parties con- 
cerned that I am still wholly unprepared to return either an 
affirmative or negative reply. I have for years stood pledged 
to go as a missionary to India, should the way be opened for 
me in such a manner that I could see God's hand leading me 
in that direction. Whether he is now opening the way for 
me to go in company with you, it is as yet quite impossible 
for me to say ; but in view of all this uncertainty, if you still 
wish to visit me and talk the matter over frankly, you can 
do so. " Yours truly, 

"Mildred Prescott." 

Three weeks from the date of that letter Mr. M. 
came to visit me. We had interchanged several 
letters, and hence did not meet as entire strangers. 
It was Saturday afternoon at three o^clock when 
he was announced. I had pictured him in imagi- 
nation as being tall and of commanding appearance, 
with a high intellectual-looking forehead and large 
black eyes. In all these respects he was as I had 
imagined, except that his eyes were dark blue 
instead of black. 

His powers as a conversationalist were rare, and 
he soon succeeded in interesting me deeply in 
himself, as well as in his chosen work. Indeed his 
work was what I had always been interested in 
when I would allow my better nature to guide me. 
He told me of his sainted mother and aged father, 



26 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

and how these dear parents had at birth consecrated 
him to the work of foreign missions, but had told 
him nothing of it until he had declared to his 
father his purpose to go as a missionary to India. 
His mother had died while he was still a student 
in college. The father, now beginning to feel the 
infirmities of old as^e and his whole heart beings 
wrapped up in this his only son, had taken back 
the gift he had made and strongly opposed his 
son's becoming a missionary to distant lands. But 
within a few months past he had cheerfully given 
his consent, and was almost as enthusiastic in his 
son's plans as if he were himself going to India. 
Quite needless is it that I should tell you of all the 
conversation of that long-to-be-remembered after- 
noon. You could not be as much interested in it 
as I was. 

He preached in our church the next day, and \\q 
again sj)ent an afternoon together. All of my 
relatives were delighted with him. Thus the days 
passed until the morning came on which I was to 
give him an answer. I had arisen early and had 
gone for a walk in the garden before breakfast. I 
had not expected ]\Ir. Marston to put in his appear- 
ance before ten o'clock. I was stooping doAvn 
over a too-spreading juniper shrub which was 
crowding out some delicate plants, when a voice 
clear and strong came to my ears, " Well, INIildred, 
wliat word have you for me this morning ? " He 



I AWAIT THE OPEmNGS OF PROVIDENCE. 27 

had come before breakfast, he said, that he might 
learn his fate, and naively added that he might 
never want any breakfast. AYe were both standing 
with downcast faces looking at that juniper shrub 
as though all our hopes were centred in it. 

He waited silently for my answer which was: 
" Oh, if you are to starve until I say what you 
wish me to say, then I have here and now an 
unqualified and positive ^yes' for you." He 
smiled as only he could smile and said, " Thank 
you : you have made me very hap^iy." 

At this point my father called us in for morning 
prayers, and my pastor being present he read the 
Scripture about Isaac and Rebekah, and I was 
quite sure there was mischief in his eyes when he 
repeated the verse : " Wilt thou go with this 
young man? And she said, I will go." Six 
weeks from that morning we were married in the 
village church where I had worshipped with parents 
and dear brothers and sisters from my childhood's 
days. And then amid tears, sobs and fond part- 
ing words we left our friends and started toward 
our distant home in the Orient. When Henry 
had asked my parents for me they had answered, 
" We know that the hand of the Lord is in this 
thing and Ave dare not say, no. Take her and 
may Heaven's richest blessing rest upon you both, 
my precious children." And thus it was that I 
awaited the openings of Providence. 



CHAPTER III. 

OUR VOYAGE TO INDIA. 

" Dear is our native land, 

And sweet the light of home, 
And starlike is the band 

In friendship's beauteous dome. 
But a brighter morning star 

Invites our footsteps on 
To eastern climes afar. 

To the land of the rising sun. 
On, On, On I 
Hope's bright and morning star 

Invites our footsteps on 
To eastern climes afar, 

To the land of the rising sun." 

ON the 20th day of June we sailed in a merchant 
vessel for Calcutta. Four months were we 
sailing upon the ocean without once setting foot on 
terra jirma. I was the only woman on board, and 
Mr. Marston and I were the only j3assengers. The 
account which I had to settle with old Neptune 
required almost all of my time for the first two 
weeks. I was so deathly sick at times that I could 
think of no better disposal of myself than to beg 
that they would lower me into the sea until they 
found a place where the waves no longer tossed, 
(28J 



OUR VOYAGE TO INDIA. 29 

and where my poor stomach might find a much- 
needed repose. But I proved to be a pretty good 
sailor in spite of my first dreadful experience. 

From Mr. Marston^s journal I copy the story 
of our voyage. 

"Ju7ie 20. After these weeks of preparation 
and of sad farewells we are come at length to the 
side of the great sea which separates us from our 
chosen work. This morning at nine o'clock we 
are on board a ship bound for Calcutta. A steam 
tug tows us out ten miles or thereabouts ; we pick 
our way amid ships and water craft of all kinds 
and fashions, from small row-boats to ocean 
steamers. The sun with kindly rays gilds with 
beauteous tint the last vision our eyes may ever 
behold in our native land, and Boston slowly sinks 
from our lingering gaze. Good-bye, dear native 
land; to thee I owe much, but to my Saviour 
more. While to him I owe my first affection and 
my best service, thou shalt ever fill one of the 
pleasantest palaces of my heart. Fair and beauti- 
ful Columbia, a long good-bye ! The breeze be- 
gins to freshen, the ship feels the burden of the 
canvas and bows under the pressure of the wind, 
as the trees of the forest. Mildred begins to look 
white about the mouth and retires to her ^ shelf 
for the night. 

"June 23. I have been having a sore battle 
with the angry sea-god, and so has Mildred, poor 



so KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

girl. Tliis perpetual rolling and rocking is enough 
to set one's head crazy ; mine seems as though it 
would burst, and Mildred cannot raise hers from 
the pillow. 

"June 24. This morning a feeling of gloom 
pervades our little community. About midnight 
one of our crew, a fine-looking sailor, went over- 
board. The wind was piling the sea in large 
waves and it was intensely dark, that nothing 
could be done to save him. Poor fellow, he had 
the ^ horrors ; ' had been made drunk by those 
who thus entrap sailors to go on a long, undesira- 
ble sea voyage. When he came to himself he gave 
w^ay to despair. He talked of his family, whom 
he had not seen for eight years; he walked the 
deck in a frenzied state, and then with a maniacal 
scream he threw himself into the wild, dark waters, 
another victim to alcohol. He who despoiled this 
man of his reason knows little and cares less wliat 
anxious wife and children await in vain his home- 
coming. ' Woe unto him that giveth his neigh- 
bor drink, that putteth thy bottle to him, and 
makest him drunken also.' Hab. 2 : 15. 

"July 4. Longitude 33° 49'— Latitude 32° 
31'. I am now so far advanced in nautical 
ability that I can take the ship's reckonings as 
Avell as the captain. Indeed the captain says, if 
the ship by chance should be left in my hands, I 
could take her safely into port. But I am not as 



OVR VOYAGE TO INDIA. 31 

yet sufficiently nimble as a sailor to climb the rope 
ladder to the mast head, nor can I tell yarns equal 
to the sailors. We have no fire-crackers nor 
Roman candles with which to celebrate this, our 
natal day of America, but have hoisted our grand 
old flag of the stars and stripes out here on the 
broad ocean fifteen hundred miles from land, and 
nearly two thousand miles from home. We have 
just passed a British ship and a Bremen brig, and 
we are proud to proclaim to them that we hail 
from ^ the land of the free, and the home of the 
brave.' 

^'July 28. To-day we have passed many of 
those little shell-fish, the nautilus, which the 
sailors call ^Portuguese men-of-war.' They are 
beautiful little fellows with membranous sails 
spotted with blue and pink, which they hoist to 
the winds while they propel themselves by means 
of numerous tentacles which surround the mouth 
and stretch down into the water. A school of 
porpoises is playing leap-frog near our ship, and 
seem to enjoy the sport hugely. You have often 
read of the stormy petrel, or, as the sailors term it, 
^ Mother Carey's chicken.' These little birds have 
been with us ever since we got well out at sea. 
They are about the size of our American robin, of 
brown color ; they have long legs and a short tail 
and are web-footed. Though we are a thousand 
miles from land they are all about our ship, never 



32 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF, 

alighting day nor night, except as they stand with 
extended wings on the water as they eat something 
thrown from our ship. In stormy weather they 
are full of wild delight, playing antics of all kinds 
with the waves. 

^^ Sept 3. Imagine yourself tossed and rocked 
incessantly day and night for weeks, and with no 
escape from it. We have just come out of a severe 
storm, and we have realized all the terrible gran- 
deur and greater awful ness of a storm at sea. The 
wind coming to us from the west in ever increas- 
ing gusts lifted up the waves in huge piles, which 
curved upon themselves and lashed the sea into a 
snowy white foam. As we gaze out upon the 
angry elements, the waves seem to fall upon each 
other like infuriated beasts roaring at their very 
impotence to resist the fury of the winds, which, 
as in malicious sport, snatch the foaming crests 
from their ow^ners, and, tossing them into millions 
of atoms, scatter them like drifting snow through 
the air. Now we mount up on the crest of a huge 
wave, while, beneath us on either side, yawns a 
frightful gulf into which we shall soon slide 
rapidly down. As we gaze upward from the 
chasm the seas seem consulting as to the way they 
may most effectually destroy us. One wave more 
savage than the rest shivers our little cabin window, 
and deluges our berths and clothing in a most un- 
comfortable manner. We are rounding the Cape 



OUR VOYAGE TO INDIA. 33 

of Good Hope, and we have decided to call it here- 
after Cape Despair. In the midst of the storm, as 
Mildred was standing in the cabin-door looking out 
upon the terrific storm, she espied a Dutch brig 
only a short distance from us, the storm causing 
the atmosphere to be almost black with its gloom, 
and the brig also in a trough of the sea so that 
none of the ship's crew had seen it. Mildred 
called out loudly, ^ a vessel.' And the captain had 
barely time to turn the ship's course sufficiently to 
escape a collision. We could almost touch the 
brig as she passed us. But the storm with all its 
black fury at length subsided. 'The Lord on 
high is mightier than the noise of many waters, 
yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.' And the 
storm rolls by, and he stills the angry seas. It is 
in such seas and under such circumstances that 
faith plumes her wings, and the heart is borne up 
above the tumult towards God and immortality. 

^^Sept 29. One hundred and one days have 
passed since we stood upon land, and only once 
during this long period have we even sighted land, 
and that was in the early part of our voyage when 
adverse winds drove us within sight of the little 
town of Macayo, on the eastern coast of Brazil. 
We could see the little houses covered with red 
tiles, but we could not land, and our ship was at 
once tacked for the southeastern seas. This 29th 
of September is the anniversary of the one great 
3 



34 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

sorrow of my youth. Twelve years ago I lost a 
mother of rare worth and aifection. 'She was 
not/ for her Father called her home. Years have 
not changed nor dimmed the love of my heart for 
that priceless friend. Few are the days even noAT 
which do not yield to me some precious remem- 
brance of her. Who can estimate the value of a 
loving Christian mother ? 

" Have our friends at home wondered how we 
pass our time on ship-board ? We have finished a 
careful reading of the New Testament in English, 
and nearly one-half of it in Greek, besides a con- 
siderable study of the Old Testament in English. 
For pastime, w^e have read two volumes of ' Rec- 
reations of a Country Parson/ ^I§hmael in the 
Wilderness/' and one or two of our best American 
histories. We wish to be prepared to defend 
American policy among the English whom we 
shall meet in India. 

" We have also read with much interest ' India, 
Ancient and Modern,^ and ' Science a Witness for 
the Bible." We are now reading ' Man Primeval,^ 
and are reviewing the Epistle to the Hebrews 
in Greek. In all these, Mildred shows quite as 
much of interest and ability as any theological 
student of the sterner sex. Who dares say that a 
woman has not the mental capacity of a man? 
Henceforth I am a strong advocate for women's 
colleges, with the same course of study as that of 



OUR VOYAGE TO INDIA. 35 

colleges for men. Yea^ I go further ; I claim co- 
education for them whenever they desire it. 

" We have also accomplished something in the 
way of needle work, having finished an elegant 
rug of bunting for our drawing-room in India. 
The various arts of seafaring life have engrossed 
an hour or two of our time each day, and it is quite 
a satisfaction to me to feel that I could take our 
ship into harbor if necessary. 

^^Oct 5. To-day there is a huge shark follow- 
ing our ship, which fact is to our sailors a sure 
prophecy of evil. How superstitious they are ! 
For example, not one of them, from captain to 
cook, could be persuaded to taste of flesh upon 
which the moonshine has rested ; for, say they, 
^ the moon poisons it.' And they actually stared 
at me in amazement when I proposed to test their 
superstitious idea by breakfasting upon ^moon- 
struck' chops. The meat was hurled overboard at 
once. 

"Oc^. 20. Our long voyage is at an end, and 
to-day we once more set foot upon terra firma. 
We are in Calcutta, the city of magnificent palaces 
and of native squalor. We at once commence 
making our purchases for our home in JSTorthern 
India ; but we are hindered on every hand by the 
Doorjah Poojah, a Hindoo festival which en- 
grosses every native heart and head. Sacrifices 
innumerable of goats and buffaloes are daily being 



36 KOENO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

offered, and the noise of the ' tam-tams ' is deafen- 
ing. 

''Oct 31. We are on board a government 
steamer to which are attached two flat-boats loaded 
with Coolies for the Assam tea-gardens. There 
are about five hundred of these Coolies crowded 
together in filth and wretchedness. The cholera 
is raging fearfully among them, and victim after 
victim is pushed off into the Ganges as soon as life 
is extinct. Bloated, putrid corpses are floating on 
the water, or are lodged among the brakes and tall 
jungle grass which line the low banks. And 
now as the shades of night gather the jackals 
come forth from their lurking places of the day, 
and howl hideously over these dead bodies, as they 
rend them in pieces and devour them. 

"The moral and physical condition of the 
natives is simply deplorable. And yet we are 
told that the Hindoos have a religion quite as 
good as the Christian, and that there is no need of 
teachers and missionaries coming from Christian 
countries to teach these poor wretches a better 
way. 

" The English officers who are our fellow-pas- 
sengers are fond of casting slurs upon America 
and the Yankees. 

"Mildred becoming quite angry with one of 
them at the dinner-table to-day, asked him to re- 
member, that insignificant and barbarous as he 



OVR VOYAGE TO INDIA. 37 

seemed to think America to be, she had whipped 
England once, and was quite able to do it again. 
Whereupon said Englishman subsided. 

"iVov. 28. We stayed last night in a bungalow 
on the banks of the Brahmapootra. A tiger was 
prowling about all night, and made several at- 
tempts to enter the bungalow. I tried to get a 
shot at him, but failed. The poor natives are in 
mortal terror of these animals, and never tire of 
sounding the praises of the white man^s Christian 
rifle. This morning we welcome a crowd of our 
hill men who come to conduct us on our way, and 
we mount our elephants, hired for the occasion, 
and make our way through the jungles to our 
future home. 

"iVbv. 30. At home; a beautiful green spot, 
the bungalow built of bamboo and the roof 
covered with jungle grass ! How pleasant to be 
at rest after these months of journeying by sea 
and by land ! 

" And now welcome work for the Master, and 
good-bye to my journal of sketches by the way. 
I send this off at once to the loved and loving 
ones at home, who are anxiously awaiting tidings 
from 

"Henry and Mildred Marston." 



CHAPTER IV. 

ASSAM AND THE ASSAMESE. 

HENCEFORTH our home was to be in the 
province of Assam in Northeastern India. 

The word Assam is of Sanscrit origin, and was 
originally written Ahom. This word means un- 
equalled, and the Assamese people think there is 
no land in the world equal to Ahom, and no 
people who can rival the Ahoms. 

The province is a rich and fertile valley with 
mountain ranges on thi-ee sides. The great 
Brahmapootra river, with sixty smaller streams, 
waters the province and renders it productive. 
Assam is said to contain more rivers than any 
country of corresponding area in the world. The 
soil yields abundant crops of rice and tobacco. 
Tea is also extensively cultivated, there being 
in 1885 over nine hundred thousand acres under 
cultivation, with an average of about three 
hundred pounds to the acre. This tea is well and 
favorably known in both England and America. 
Iron, coal, rubber, sugar and silk are also found in 
Assam. The huge rubber trees are abundant on 
the hills, and thrive well also on the plains. 
(38) 



ASSAM AND THE ASSAMESE. 39 

They as well as the banyans are a great boon to a 
country where the intense heat of the sun makes 
ample shade-trees so very valuable. Patches of 
sugar-cane are seen in all the villages, as well as 
large gardens of the mustard plant, and the every- 
where present red-pepper. 

Little was known of Assam previous to the 
seventeenth century, up to which time its form of 
government seems to have been largely patriarchal, 
and the aboriginal tribes were the predominating 
power. 

The early Aryans who invaded Assam were a 
company of herdsmen who came there from 
Central Asia, and were a widely different people 
from their descendants, the present inhabitants of 
Assam. This branch of the Aryans which we 
call Indo- Aryan, or Hindoo, drove the aborigines 
into the distant mountains, and from this time 
petty Aryan kings ruled the valley of the great 
Brahmapootra. 

In the beginning of the seventeenth century the 
Mogul emperors endeavored to annex Assam to 
their Indian domains, but Avere bravely repulsed 
by the Assamese, who successfully repelled the in- 
vasion. From this time until 1770 there were in- 
ternal dissensions, and the country declined in 
power and prosperity, being rent by civil wars. 
In 1770 the British aided the Rajah of Assam in 
putting down a rebellion, and as a compensation 



40 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

for acting as umpire they received a portion of the 
province. 

During a war with Burmah, in 1826^ the British 
again came to the aid of the Assamese, and from 
that date until this, the whole of Assam has been 
nominally under British rule, though many of the 
hill-tribes have defied the lion's power. 

The " unequalled " Assamese say that they de- 
scended from the Hindoo god, Indra, who presides 
over the atmosphere, and to whom the other gods 
are all subordinate. Indra, they say, placed the 
sun in the sky and charged the clouds with water. 
One of their prayers to Indra begins thus : " Shed- 
der of rain, granter of all desires, set open this 
cloud." The Brahmapootra river derives its name 
from two Sanscrit words — Brahma, the creator of 
man, and " pootro,'' son : the son of the creator. The 
tradition says that ages ago there was a great and 
sore drought in the land, and in their distress the 
people cried to the creator Brahma, and he in 
compassion sent down his son in the form of a 
river and thus saved the perishing people. Hence 
the river is sacred, and he who bathes in its holy 
waters is made acceptable to the gods. 

The Brahmapootra takes its rise north of the 
snow-covered Himalaya mountains. "Him'' is 
the Sanscrit for snow and " aloi " is a palace, 
Himaloi, a snow palace. The view of this range 
in the distance, as the rising sun shines upon it, is 



ASSAM AND THE ASSA3IESE. 41 

one of the grandest sights eye ever gazed upon. It 
presents the appearance of a beautiful city with 
golden spires and domes. No wonder that the 
common people really think it is the abode of the 
gods and regard it with all the awe and reverence 
of the ancient Greek for his Olympus ! 

From this dwelling-place of the gods, the 
Himaloi range, did the Creator send his son the 
Brahmapootra. To be thrown into this sacred 
river is to the Hindoo mind a sure guarantee of a 
better state in the next transmigration of soul. 
An old Assamese once told me that he would not 
for all the gold of India be buried under ground, 
as he would in this case surely become either a 
worm, snake or toad : whereas if he were thrown 
into the Brahmapootra, he stood a fair chance of 
being a fish, or a crocodile, either of which was 
much higher in the transmigratory scale. I have 
counted during the cholera season in one day a 
hundred corpses Avhich had been thrown into the 
river. Some of them had been partially cremated 
according to the custom of the high cast Hindoos, 
but the greater part had been pitched into the 
river as soon as life was extinct. 

Never shall I forget the impression made upon 
me by those bloated dead bodies as they floated in 
the river. And when night came and the boat 
anchored for the darkness, there was something 
intensely torturing in the hideous yells of the 



42 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0VNTAIN CHIEF. 

jackals as they fought over the bodies which had 
washed ashore. 

Sleep visits not the " newly arrived " in India 
under such circumstances, and nerves and sym- 
pathies are racked until the morning light drives 
away the carnivorous herd. And yet long resi- 
dence in India makes even the European some- 
what indifferent to the ghastly sights. An old 
tea-planter laughingly asked me if I understood 
the w^ords the jackals used, when making a feast 
from the dead body. " Listen/' he said, "the first 
sentence is an announcement to the whole jackal 
tribe : ^ Dead Hindoo — Dead Hindoo ; ' and the 
invited guests answer back Svhere, where?' The 
original finder replies ^ here, oh, here.' " Thus 
instructed I listened and was surprised to find how 
exactly their cries seemed to take on the form of 
the planter's words. The natives regard all this 
with supreme indiiference, and when they saw my 
great perturbation, they would toss the head as 
only a Hindoo can, and say, "The gods have 
written the fate of all on their foreheads : if they 
have written there that one is to be eaten of jackals, 
that one is only fulfilling the destiny the gods have 
arranged for him. Who are we that we should 
fight against tlie gods?" 

I am glad to say that the English government 
put a stop to this custom of throwing the dead into 
the rivers before I left Assam, and the natives 



ASSAM AND THE ASSAMESE. 43 

either burn or bury their dead. Thus the river 
water which every one drinks (there are no wells 
in Assam) has become purer. The rivers of Assam 
abound in crocodiles, among which are many man- 
eaters. These animals are fond of basking in the 
sunshine on the banks of the river near the water's 
edge. Mr. Marston has frequently shot them from 
our little boat, and finding that the ball has 
lodged in a vulnerable spot, we have moored the 
boat and minutely examined these monsters, which 
often measure twenty feet in length. The natives 
are fond of crocodiles' eggs, which they unearth 
from the warm sand where the animal has depos- 
ited them, trusting to the sun's rays to hatch them. 
The crocodile's egg is about the size of a goose egg, 
and is said to be quite as palatable. 

Many natives in Assam are yearly killed by the 
crocodiles. Yet in spite of all the risk, hundreds 
of men, women and children daily bathe in the 
rivers. I have often heard, in the stillness of the 
night, the loud champing of the monster's jaws, 
and felt the thud of his heavy body as he has 
struck our little boat, and springing to the chil- 
dren's bed to see if they were safe, the old native 
nurse starting up from her sleep would cry out, 
"Ki hoi, mem saheb?" "What is the matter, 
white lady ? " And when I would tell her there 
were crocodiles all about the little canoe, she would 
yawningly reply : " Well they can't eat your chil- 



44 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

dren unless the gods have foreordained them to 
become food for the crocodiles, and if these chil- 
dren were created for that purpose you ought not 
to fight against the gods. What is written on one's 
forehead must come to pass/' And with these 
comforting words she would seek her mat and sink 
into peaceful slumber. Such is Hindoo fatalism. 
According to their creed everybody's fate is writ- 
ten on the forehead in letters so minute, that none 
but the gods can read them. Every event of life 
is chronicled there, and the infant at birth has its 
whole future thus laid out definitely by the gods. 

The classical language of the Assamese is the 
Sanscrit, the most ancient and original of all the 
Indo-European languages and the one which 
throws much light upon the original roots of lan- 
guage. 

This wonderful language opens to us the inward 
and the outward life of a people who number one- 
seventh of the human race, for it is the sacred lan- 
guage of all the Hindoos. The alpliabet has ten 
distinct characters for the vowels, four for the 
semi-vowels, five nasals, ten surd mutes, ten 
sonant mutes, three sibilants and three aspirants, 
making in all forty-five distinct characters. This 
language is richer in declensions than the Greek, 
but poorer in conjugations. Our decimal notation 
and algebraical calculus are both derived from the 
ancient Hindoos. The Sanscrit is, however, a dead 



ASSAM AND THE ASSAMESE. 45 

language, and the spoken language of the people of 
the plains is a derivation of the Ancient Sanscrit 
which varies as widely from the original as the 
modern Greek of to-day from the Ancient tongue. 

The spoken language is called Prakrit, and is 
written like the Sanscrit from left to right, in 
characters which are made up of triangles and 
straight lines with very few curves. It is guttural 
like the German, and somewhat difficult for Euro- 
peans to speak. It was only after I had been in 
Assam two years, that I could make the natives 
understand whether I was talking to them about a 
house — ghor, a wall — gor, or a rhinoceros — gor 
(with the nasal sound). The A ssamese is the language 
of the entire population of the Brahmapootra val- 
ley, and is the medium of intercourse with the 
bordering hill tribes, hence it must be learned well 
if a person wishes really to know the people who 
speak it, and hopes to benefit them. The Bengali 
language in common with the Assamese, borrows 
its religious and scientific terms from the Sanscrit, 
and on this account the two languages have been 
thought identical. But the grammars of these two 
dialects are quite different, and therefore they can- 
not be said to be one and the same language. We 
might as well consider the French and Italian 
languages identical, as they both spring from the 
Latin. 

No people on the face of the earth suffer more 



46 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

from evil spirits than the Assamese. I, of course, 
do not refer to those evil spirits by which thou- 
sands in Christian lands annually fill a drunkard^s 
grave. Fortunately for the Assamese, the Hindoo 
religion forbids its followers from becoming 
possessed with this kind of spirits. The old 
Hindoo law commands that if a man be found 
guilty of drinking intoxicating liquor, he shall be 
compelled to drink the same quantity boiling hot. 
He does not often repeat the offence. And every 
respectable Hindoo community at the present day 
deems each drunkard worthy of being carried in 
derision through the streets with all the oppro- 
brium of tar and feathers. Our land might well 
learn a salutary lesson from the Hindoos in this 
respect. 

Demonology among the Hindoos dates back to 
the age of the Yedas. These books are believed 
to have been written as early as the time of Moses, 
and were collected in the fourteenth century B. c. 
Mount Meru, w^hich stands between the earth and 
the heavens, is the battle-ground of the demons. 
Some of them are pictured with long tusks and 
bloody tongues, who lurk in secret places for 
human prey. Ogres, snakes with human faces, 
dwarfs, dragons and vampires are believed to be in 
every available space in air, earth and water. 
There is not a space in nature as wide as a hair 
which some evil spirit does not fill. The good 



ASSAM AND THE ASSAMESE. 47 

spirits live far above the earthy and are not sup- 
posed to concern themselves much with human 
aifairs. The demon " Oop '' is one greatly feared 
by the ignorant. He is said to be a huge monster 
with a blood-red tongue a yard and a half long, 
and with tusks like an elephant, who has a dis- 
agreeable practice of stalking abroad every Tues- 
day and Saturday night in search of human vic- 
tims. I have been most solemnly told by a 
frightened man that he had just escaped from 
" Oop ; " that he had seen his tusks and his well- 
known tongue, and had felt his hot breath on his 
shoulders. 

The " Evil Eye " is another demon who is sup- 
posed to be always peering about, and many are 
the artifices to which the people resort in order to 
evade him. An Assamese must not be looked at 
when he eats, lest the " Evil Eye " may be lurking 
through human eyes, and curse the food and the 
eater. The dining-room of the Assamese is 
necessarily the darkest room in the house, the one 
most retired from human gaze. You must never 
tell the Assamese Avoman that her child is beauti- 
ful, for the demons will hear you and carry off 
the child. On the contrary you may evade the 
demons and please the mother, by calling the child 
very plain, and at the same time giving the mother 
a wink, to let her know that you mean just the con- 
trary to what you say, I have heard an Assamese 



48 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

mother call her new-born babe all manner of vile 
epithets, that the demons may be made to believe 
that the child is not worth their carrying away. 
They give their children repellent names for the 
same reason. One man who had lost several children 
called the last born '' Ghin/' which means " Hate/' 
and this one lived. It was hard for him even 
after he became a Christianj to give np his belief 
that the odious name had saved to him this child. 
If a person rudely strikes a tree in which an evil 
spirit resides, or spits under it, the evil one will be 
sure to punish him sooner or later. Bamboo trees 
must be cut only on certain days of the week, for 
fear of offending the sj)irits. 

The Assamese greatly fear the darkness, and 
will not leave a child asleej) alone in a dark room, 
believing a demon will carry it off. As I was in 
the habit of putting my babe to sleep early and 
leaving it in a dark room, I have frequently heard 
the native women exclaim : " Hai, hai, mem lukh 
bhutor kotha na jane ! " "Alas, alas, the white 
ladies know not the customs of the evil spirits.'' 

It is distressing to Avitness the effect of this be- 
lief in demonology upon the children of the coun- 
try. From their earliest childhood they listen to 
frightful stories of the depredations of evil spirits, 
and their young lives are robbed of half their 
comfort by the fears which continually assail them. 
A native quakes with fear, if by chance a vulture 



ASSAM AND THE ASSAMESE. 49 

alights upon his house ; it is a sure omen that one 
of his family will soon become the food of vul- 
tures. They say a young vulture can never fly 
until he has tasted of human flesh. A certain 
magistrate in Assam fined one of his subordinates 
quite heavily, whereupon the subordinate took the 
head of a male sheep, drove seven nails in it, and 
with many incantations buried it, at the same time 
expressing his firm belief that in seven days the 
magistrate's head would be in the ground. 

The cholera is considered the worst and the 
largest of the demons, Avhich walks by day and 
by night through the land, killing whomsoever he 
will. The name of this disease must be spoken 
only in a whisper during its prevalence in a vil- 
lage, and many speak of it as the ^' Great One.'' 

An earthquake is caused by the shaking of the 
elephant upon whose back the earth stands. 

These and many other superstitions which I 
have not time to enumerate are disappearing before 
the onward march of Christian civilization. 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE HILL TRIBES OF ASSAM. 

THE mountaineers of Assam are a widely dif- 
ferent people from the Hindoos, whom the 
preceding chapter describes. 

These hill tribes were doubtless once the in- 
habitants of the beautiful Brahmapootra valley, 
and were driven thence by the invading Aryans, 
the forefathers of the Hindoos. 

The barren mountains and the wild jungles were 
deemed good enough for these aboriginal inhabitants 
of Assam. What if these people did prefer the 
fertile plains and green valleys ? A stronger and 
more cunning race decided that these aborigines 
must go, and allow the conquerors to demonstrate 
the beauty of the " survival of the fittest." Very 
much after the same pattern have we Americans 
treated our aborigines. And we are yet far from 
perfect in following the divine precepts of the 
Christ, who taught us both by precept and example 
the true brotherhood of man. 

Many and fierce were the conflicts, however, 
before the hill tribes relinquished their rights to 
their enemies. If physical strength could have 
(50) 



THE HILL TRIBES OF ASSAM. 51 

decided the warfare they could have been victors, 
but when treachery and intrigue were brought to 
bear upon them they were outwitted by the crafty 
Hindoo. 

Very few of these tribes had been reached by 
Christian influence or western ideas of civiliza- 
tion, when Mr. Marston and I went to live among 
them. They had no written language, no ances- 
tral lineage of honor, and no very definite form of 
religious worship. They have a tradition that 
points to a Chinese origin, and the old people tell 
of a time when they had a literature and a name 
among nations. 

But as they neglected the tilling of the soil, and 
gave all their time to their books, the mountain 
deities became angry, and gathered together all 
their books and made a huge bonfire of them, and 
from that time they have grown ignorant and 
barbarous. 

The people among whom our lot was cast were 
more peaceable than the others, and never fought 
with their neighbors if they could escape it. 
Their dialect is almost entirely monosyllabic, and 
they use the same word for many different pur- 
poses : for instance, hem, is a house ; hem hong- 
long, is a house on wheels, i. e., a wagon. Their 
houses are made of bamboo and grass, and are 
built from twenty to thirty feet above the ground, 
the ascent being by rude ladders which are noth- 



52 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

ing more than unhewn trees, with notches cut in 
them for steps. An ordinary house costs them 
about two dollars, and requires about ten hours for 
its construction. The floor is of split bamboo, 
and bends under your foot at every step. The 
style of architecture is neither Gothic nor Ionic, 
but exceedingly aboriginal. The houses are long 
and narrow, and are destitute of all kinds of 
furniture. The roof is thickly thatched, and 
projects several feet beyond the sides of the 
house. 

The soil is not fertile like that of the plains, and 
the quantity of rice raised is not sufficient to feed 
the inhabitants. Cotton is, however, an abundant 
product of their soil, and this they exchange for 
rice when they visit the plains. 

The women Aveave a coarse cotton cloth, coloring 
it either blue, red or yellow, and of this material 
the garments of both sexes are made. The di^ess 
of the women is a short blue petticoat extending 
from the waist to the knees, while the male attire 
is even more limited, being a short apron of red 
cotton cloth. For the cooler weather, they add a 
red cotton shawl fringed at both ends, and worn as 
the Hindoos wear the chuddar y i. e., one end over 
the head, and the other falling gracefully over the 
shoulders. 

Both sexes are very fond of mustard oil as a 
pomatum, and you can make a mountain chief no 



THE MILL TRIBES OF ASSAM. 53 

more acceptable present than a bottle of mustard 
oil. This use of it has, however, been learned 
of the Hindoos. In their native state, these 
mountain people are the most unkempt of all the 
Asiatic races. They also use the mustard oil in 
cooking their meats and vegetables. Yams and 
sweet potatoes are cultivated with considerable 
success, and are roasted in the ashes as our grand- 
mothers used to cook Irish potatoes. Fish is in 
great demand. The mountain streams yielding but 
very few, the people are often under the necessity 
of substituting grasshoppers' and elephants' flesh 
for them. 

Wild, ignorant and filthy as these children of 
the jungle are, there are characteristic traits per- 
taining to them which strongly attach them to 
those who are interested in their civilization and 
Christianization. Their trust and simple faith in 
their teachers and superiors are at once a comfort 
and an inspiration. They are not idolaters, have 
never had any images of their gods, and are much 
less superstitious than the Hindoos. They wor- 
ship the sun, the god of disease, the spirits of their 
ancestors, and the Great Spirit. Their mode of 
worship is almost entirely by sacrifices of vegeta-. 
bles, rice, chickens and goats. Often have I seen 
a toddling infant among them carry his little 
handful of rice, and offer it at the root of some 
large green tree, believing as he had been told, 



54 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

that some god lives in that tree and will bless the 
giver of even a handful of rice. 

As we have before remarked, there is little 
doubt that these mountain tribes once inhabited 
the plains, and lived in a greater degree of civiliza- 
tion and refinement. But the ancient Aryans in- 
vading the country in the remote ages drove these 
unsuspecting people, by treachery, back into the 
barren mountains and cheated them of their long 
possessed country. In the same selfish manner 
did our most revered Puritan fathers treat the 
North American Indians. And we, as their de- 
scendants, have as yet learned but little more of 
that true spirit of Christian philanthropy that 
would lead us to love our neighbor as ourselves. 

In all that pertains to the comforts and elegan- 
cies of civilized life, these tribes inhabiting the 
mountains of northeastern India are poor indeed. 

Vermin of all kinds live luxuriously among 
them, and often after entertaining a company of 
these people in my drawing-room, I have seen 
twenty and more of the species Cimex creeping 
aAvay from where my guests have been seated. 
Six or seven of these loathsome bugs are given 
internally by tlie people to prevent ague. 

Fleas also abound, and during the months of 
March and April, they seem literally to take 
possession of our houses. On arising from our 
beds an armed host seemed to attack our feet, cov- 



THE HILL TRIBES OF ASSAM. 55 

ering them so thickly that we could hardly discern 
by sight, whether they were human flesh or para- 
sitic fleas. The dust of the earth during these 
two months swarms with them, but as the rainy 
season sets in they disappear as if by magic. 

The mountain jungles abound with mammoth 
trees : oaks, chestnuts, and birches thrive on the 
higher ranges, and lower down we find the rubber, 
the teak and the /la/.* Here and there all over the 
hills are acacia trees, and the use of the bark is 
well recognized by the natives. 

Wild animals abound in the dense jungles, and 
human life is not 'safe while travelling even short 
distances. The huge man-eating Bengal tiger has 
found his way into these mountains, and is ever 
on the alert for human flesh. The elephant, 
rhinoceros, the buffalo and the bear are numerous, 
and leopards, jackals and monkeys are as thick 
as peas in a pod. Birds of gorgeous plumage 
abound, but we miss the sweet singers of our 
native land ; the only singers I have met among 
the birds of India being the mina and the Mm 
raja. 

*The hal or sal (for the natives use "h" and "s" inter- 
changeably) is a hard wood. We used to call it the Assamese 
mahogany. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OUR MOUNTAIN HOME. 

SHOULD I live to be a hundred years old I can 
never forget the day when we reached our 
home on the mountains. 

Fifty swarthy, robust hill men came to meet us, 
and to conduct us on our way. When the moun- 
tain paths became too steep for our elephants, 
these men carried us in baskets, on their shoulders, 
with a strap passing across their foreheads. The 
hill men are wonderfully strong, and can climb 
the mountains with the agility of the wild goat. 

Thus at length we came, after perils by sea and 
by land, to our chosen home among the hill people 
of Assam. We were the first white people that 
had ever attempted to make a home among them, 
and I was the first white woman they had ever 
seen. 

Our hearts were deeply touched by the warmth 
and kindness of our reception. They had cut 
bamboo and thatch and with their own hands 
built us a dwelling-house and also a chapel and 
school-house. And though in our eyes they were 
(56) 



OUR MOUNTAIN HOME. 57 

rude, empty structures, they were palaces to these 
ignorant people. 

We at once set about learning the language by 
making use of every word we heard, and putting 
it into a vocabulary for future use. A missionary 
who had travelled through this section had made a 
list of words, and this we found very useful. And 
having no interpreter we were quite astonished to 
find ourselves in a few months successful in con- 
veying instruction to the ignorant ones about us. 
They were entirely ignorant of the most common 
laws of health and cleanliness, and we had need of 
much patient endurance in well-doing. 

At the end of the second year among them, we 
had gathered a flourishing Normal School in which 
were taught young men of seven different tribes. 
These were all preparing to go out as teachers and 
Bible readers among their respective tribes. I had 
found it almost impossible at first to get the 
parents^ consent for their daughters to be instructed. 
They would laugh heartily at the absurdity of the 
idea and exclaim, " Teach the girls ! Why you 
might just as well gather in the goats and the 
wild hogs and seat them on benches, and teach 
them the alphabet." But by means of attractive 
music, bright-colored jackets, and a bottle of mus- 
tard oil, I at last won my way into their hearts 
and thus started my first girls^ school. What 
pleasure I found in opening to them the doors of 



58 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF, 

knowledge, and how good and true they were to 
me! 

A savage, warlike tribe inhabited the hills north 
of our peaceable tribe, and as we daily looked out 
upon these blue ranges we longed to carry to 
them also the message of peace and eternal life. 
English officers one after another had been mur- 
dered by them, and hence every one warned us as 
we valued our lives to keep away from these 
savage people. In spite of all these warnings my 
good husband resolved to make the venture. The 
English magistrate offered him an escort of sepoys 
and the protection of the English army, but he 
politely declined this assistance, saying quietly, 
" For me ^ it is better to trust in the Lord than to 
put confidence in princes.' " The voice of his 
Master seemed plainly to say to him, " Go teach 
them also," and he dared not disobey the heavenly 
vision ; indeed he Avas eager to obey it. An event 
which was of momentous interest to us occurred 
about this time, and hence Henry delayed his 
hazardous journey to those northern savages. I 
will copy from Henry's letter to his home circle 
describing this important event. " The Lord has 
been pleased to send to us a missionary associate 
in the person of a baby-boy. There being no 
physician within several days' journey of us, you 
may imagine that we felt much anxiety about the 
issue of the event, especially as we have no trusty 



OUR 3I0UNTAIN HOME. 69 

old women nor nurses. So I took my Bible and 
read, 'What time I am afraid I will trust in 
thee/ and then I took my ^Household Practice 
of Medicine ' and tried to follow out the directions 
given there, and the results were all we could have 
wished or asked for. As for the boy himself, he 
is a fine young fellow and asserts his claims most 
vigorously. They say he looks like his father, 
but I think he is more like Mildred. We call 
him Paul. 

" That God should make over to us in trust such 
great interests as cluster about an immortal spirit 
reminds us most forcibly of what he expects us to 
be and to do. How honored every parent is ! and 
yet I shrink from the responsibility. But now 
there is no option. Already by our command, 
under God, a frail bark has been launched on the 
great sea of an endless life ; the immortal spirit 
waiting by the shore, the moorings cut, sails 
unfurled, anchor weighed, waiting for our hand to 
take the helm and pilot it through the straits of 
infancy and youth, over the quicksands, and by 
the rocks out into the open sea with a well-planned 
chart for further guidance and direction. Oh, 
for wisdom and patience to do all this aright ! " 

And now I will go back to my history of 
Henry's trip to the tribes north of us. Our little 
Paul was three months old, and as the natives all 
about me were very kind and attentive, Henry felt 



60 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

that baby and I would be cared for during his 
absence. How sad I felt that morning when he 
said, good-bye ! I feared that I should never see him 
again. I dared not go with him on account of our 
baby. And so with tearful eyes I gazed after him 
and his faithful band of school-boys. What might 
not those savage people do to him ? How would 
they receive him and his strange message of a 
crucified Christ? 

After two weeks' journey he came to a narrow 
pass between two rugged mountains. And as he 
attempted to enter that defile and thus set foot 
upon the soil of the savages, he was confronted by 
a band of twenty warlike chiefs painted with 
hideous colors, each wearing a necklace of human 
skulls. These chiefs instantly ranked themselves 
into two squads of ten each, and standing in a line 
at the entrance of the defile they lifted their long 
spears above their heads and defied the missionary 
and his little unarmed band. For one moment 
only did Henry hesitate ; then taking his violin, 
which he had called during all our residence in 
Northern India his second assistant in missionary 
work, he drew the bow and in a calm and clear 
voice accompanied the instrument in a language 
understood by the chiefs, and sang, "Am I a 
soldier of the Cross," etc. The savages listened 
with rapt attention until he had marched slowly 
through the defile and past them and their uplifted 



OUR MOUNTAIN H03IE. 61 

spears, and as he sang and played, one after 
another of the spears were dropped and their 
owners seemed completely under the magical spell 
of the music and the man. As the music ceased 
an old chief, who was their leader, exclaimed ; " It 
is a god and not an Englishman, and see, the in- 
strument he carries is alive and has a voice like 
the him rajah.''^ The him rajah is their sweetest 
bird songster. 

" Stranger, wherefore come you amongst us ? " 
is the question they finally ask. 

The missionary realizes that his life probably 
depends upon his answer to that question, and he 
carefully chooses his words. 

" I come to teach you to sing and play on this 
violin with which you are so much delighted. I 
come to help you to be wise men and to live as 
other great nations live ; to give you a written 
language and books, and a better religion than 
what you now have." 

"Are you an Englishman ? " they ask. 

" No, I am an American, and have nothing to 
to do with the setting up of a new government 
among you." 

"What is that strange creature you carry about 
that sings so sweetly ? " 

" It is a musical instrument which in Christian 
countries is called a fiddle or violin." 

" Well, stranger, you may come and live here 



62 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

among us if you will bring that ^ Christian fiddle ' 
and teach our sons how to use it/' 

And thus it was that the missionary, by means 
of a violin, gained an entrance among a people who 
before this had cruelly slain every Avhite man who 
had ventured among them. He stayed two months 
among them, and taught them the words of eter- 
nal life, and the story of the Son of God. When 
he returned home six of the young men of that 
tribe came with him to study in our Normal 
School, and to go back as teachers and Bible 
readers among their people. And thus it was 
that a wide door was opened for us among that 
hitherto barbarous tribe ; a work Avhich has been 
developing and widening during all the succeed- 
ing years. 

My husband went from place to place among 
the people of the villages and in the jungles much 
of the time, while I remained at home to look 
after the schools and our little family. When 
Paul was three years old a winsome little daugh- 
ter whom we called Ruth came to us. We were 
very happy in our home life — happier, I think, 
than four-fifths of the families in America and 
England — though we lived in a bamboo house, 
with mudded w^alls, and had no carpets and no 
" interior decorations.^' For, we felt that we were 
doing a work which was benefiting humanity, and 
which would never have - been done but for us. 



OUR MOUNTAIN HOME. 63 

Our lives were counting for something, and we 
were polishing rough stones for the temple of the 
living God. 

It is true we were exposed to hardships, and the 
plague was often rife in our midst. We minis- 
tered day and night to the sick and the suifering 
during the cholera epidemics, and felt no fear. Is 
not man immortal until his work is done? And 
did not Christ our example thus spend his life as 
he went about doing good ? And should the ser- 
vant be more chary of his service than his Mas- 
ter? We came very near losing our precious 
Paul with that dreadful disease of India, jungle 
fever. None but parents can know our anxiety 
as we watched beside him day after day, fearing 
that the sweet young life was going out. Hoav we 
longed for a good physician, who would advise us 
as to his medical treatment ! Brain fever set in 
after the jungle fever had lasted three weeks, and 
the poor little fellow's screams were most pitiable. 
Never shall I forget the night when the crisis 
came. He fell into a quiet slumber, and when he 
awoke his fever was gone, and he recognized us. 
Henry and I both fell upon our knees, and 
breathed out our hearts in grateful thanksgiving. 
Our young men of the Normal School, after three 
years' instruction, had gone out to teach among 
their people, and as Mr. Marston travelled from 
place to place he found many who were ready to 



64 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

be taught, and these one after another entered the 
school, so that we always had as many pupils as 
we had funds to provide for. 

jMany were the perplexities I had in getting a 
girls' school on a firm footing. The parents did 
not realize the importance of educating the girls 
in book knowledge, and I was hence obliged to 
teach needlework, spinning, weaving, and the cut- 
ting and making of garments. Often a crusty old 
father could be induced to send his daughter to me 
for instruction, by looking at a handsomely em- 
broidered pair of slippers, and learning that if he 
would only let his daughter Kache come to school, 
she could make him a pair just like those. Many 
a faithful native worker in India to-day owes his 
or her Christianization to a slipper ! " Upon 

Edom will I cast my shoe Who will 

bring me into the fenced city ? who hath led me 
unto Edom?'' (Ps. 108 : 9, 10, Revised Aversion.) 

Early one morning there came to our bungalow 
a man of imposing figure and noble bearing. He 
led by the hand a little child, a boy about six 
years of age. On seeing us he advanced, and with 
a low salaam addressed us thus : " I am a chief. 
I live far away in the jungle. I have heard that 
you have come from the setting sun to teach us 
hill men about the great God. I am now old, but 
my children can learn the true religion. Here is 
my youngest son. I give him to you. Take 



OUR MOUNTAIN HOME. 65 

bim. He is no longer mine, but yours. Where 
you go, he shall go ; where you stay, he shall stay ; 
your religion shall be his religion, your God be 
his God. But he is a little child. Be kind to 
him for his parents' sake, for we love him 
dearly." 

Thus saying he quietly turned to his child for a 
last fond embrace, and in a moment, without wait- 
ing for a reply, was out of sight on his way back 
to his distant jungle home. I mention this inci- 
dent to show how the people were coming to have 
confidence in us, and in the work we were doing for 
them. This boy proved to be one of our brightest 
pupils in the Normal School, and a great comfort 
up us. 



CHAPTER Vn. 

KOENO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

MR. RUSKIN in his preface to " The Story of 
Ida" says: "The lives we need to have 
written for us are of the people w^hom the world 
has never thought of, far less heard of, who are yet 
doing most of its work, and of whom we may 
learn how it can best be done." The hero of our 
story, though an unknown man of the jungle, comes 
under this class, and this is my only apology for 
attempting to write some of the incidents of his 
Hfe. 

Korno Siga was born in a small rude village on 
the mountains. His name is derived from the 
Assamese language and means, '^split-ear." His 
father was a mountain chief, but very poor in this 
world's goods. 

When his mother bored the ears of her baby-boy 
according to the custom of all respectable aborig- 
ines, the instrument slipped and cut through the 
entire lobe of his right ear. As she knew nothing 
of surgery the ear was left to heal in its divided 
condition and he was named according to the 
deformity, a custom which prevails largely in 
(66) 



KORNO SWA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 67 

India. If a baby cries a great deal, he is apt to 
be called Kandoora, a cry-baby. If one smiles 
often, he is called Milihia, a smiler. The ear 
ornaments worn by these people of both sexes are 
enormously large and are often of the rudest char- 
acter. They are made of wood, colored glass, or 
wads of cotton-wool, into which some large flower 
has been inserted. They are often so heavy as 
to pull the lobe of the ear until it touches the 
shoulder. 

But little is known of Korno Siga's early years. 
When about eighteen years of age (these people 
keep no record of their children's ages and hence 
we never knew positively their age), he came to 
our mission station and learned to read and write. 
When he had been with us four months he became 
a convert to Christianity. The manner of his 
coming to us was as follows : one sultry afternoon 
during the prevalence of the Southwest monsoon, 
my husband and I were seated on the verandah, 
surrounded by a group of natives whom we were 
instructing. 

Suddenly there appeared from the jungle near 
our house a wild, unkempt boy who rapidly urged 
his way through the crowd of mountain men on 
the verandah^ and came to us. His first words 
were, "Are you the white teachers ? " Being an- 
swered in the affirmative he made a low salaam 
and seated himself on the floor. In reply to our 



68 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

questions as to who he was, and what he wanted, 
he told the following story, which I give as nearly 
as possible in his own words : 

^' My name is Korno Siga. I come from the 
distant hills. I wish to know what the religion of 
the white man is and Avhat it can do for a rude 
mountaineer. Mine has been a sad, hard life. 
When I was an infant I was swaj)ped for a kid, 
because I was a frail child and my poor father 
and mother feared that I never could be of much 
service to them, either in cultivating the cotton, or 
working in the rice-fields. So they gave me to 
the family of another chief that was childless, 
and who preferred me to the kid. My foster- 
parents taught me to worship the mountain spirits, 
and to take my little handful of rice each morning 
and lay it at the root of some large green tree. 
They told me that the spirit who lived in the tree 
would thus be pleased with me, and keep the evil 
spirit of disease from me. I was taught to pay 
the highest respect and veneration to these trees. 
They were mostly the huge rubber trees with 
which our mountains abound. I was taught that 
it was very wicked to mar the trunk or branches 
of these sacred trees, and that if I spit underneath 
one of them, it was a direct insult to the gods who 
lived in their branches. 

"Many hours did I spend under these trees 
trying to catch a glimpse of a god, and to learn if 



KORNO SiGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 69 

lie was pleased with my offerings. But as I grew 
older I became more and more dissatisfied with 
myself and my mode of worship, and with the 
rude life of the mountaineers. I felt that there 
must be a manner of life higher and better than 
this, and I longed to visit the plains and talk with 
the Hindoo priests and religious mendicants and 
fakirs of whom I had heard. Perhaps they could 
tell me of a better way of living and of worship- 
ping. About this time my foster-mother died, and 
her corpse was placed on the chang (a bamboo 
frame on which the dead are kept for a number 
of days before cremation or burial) for thirty days. 
The first fifteen days of this time her disembodied 
spirit was supposed to be roaming over the earth 
seeking a place of rest, and during this time hired 
mourners wept and wailed for her. The last fif- 
teen days were spent in feasting and dancing, 
because the weary spirit was supposed to have 
found an abode in some other form of existence. 
Many a night did I go and sit in the darkness 
near my mother's chang until the day dawned. 
How I wished that she would speak to me and 
tell me what she had learned since she had left 
me ! But no voice came to me through the still- 
ness of the night, and I was unhappy and desolate 
in spirit. And hence I sought a Hindoo high 
priest, who lived at the foot of our mountain, and 
who claimed that he could make unhappy people 



70 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

happy. The journey was long and perilous, for 
the way was through a pathless jungle infested 
with wild and savage animals. 

"The 'Great One of the Earth/ as he styled 
himself, did not receive me graciously, nor did his 
aspect impress me with a confidence in his purity 
and holiness of character. I told him the whole 
story of my life, and of my desire to obtain some- 
thing higher and better than I had yet found. I 
asked him if he could tell me of some good thing 
I could do, whereby I might be able to forget all 
the wrong things I had ever done. He answered 
that all power and all knowledge were his ; that 
being sinless himself he could forgive the sins of 
others ; but that I must first commit to memory one 
thousand Hindoo Slohas (wise sayings of the 
Shasters), which he would daily rehearse for me ; 
and immediately afterwards make two long pil- 
grimages to holy shrines. When all this had been 
done I must become his cow-boy, and be obedient 
unto him all the days of my life. I cheerfully 
promised to do all he had asked of me, if he would 
in return give me peace of mind and make me 
truly happy. 

" Our people have wonderful memories, and it 
was not many weeks before I had the thousand 
Slohas so that I could repeat them in consecutive 
order, as given in the Shasters. But the pil- 
grimages were hard indeed. The first required 



KORNO 8IGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 71 

that I should have nails driven through the soles 
of my wooden sandals, and at every step the blood 
flowed from my pierced feet, and I could only 
take a few steps at a time, and then wait days for 
the wounds to heal before I resumed my journey. 
Thus I was months making my first pilgrimage 
and at length reached the spot sacred to all Hin- 
doos, where I threw myself prostrate before the 
idol, and begged that he Avould give me an 
assurance that all I had done was acceptable to 
him. I tore my hair and smote upon my breast 
and cried yet more loudly, but no voice spoke to 
me and no smile of compassion lighted up the 
grim visage of the god. Weary and discouraged, 
I made my way back to the priest, and asked him 
what more I should do. He ordered my second 
pilgrimage to be made by measuring my length to 
another shrine. I would that I could have 
escaped another weary pilgrimage, but the priest 
assured me that this one would surely bring me 
comfort, and so I undertook it. I lay down and 
with my da (a large knife used by all the natives 
of this tribe), marked the place where my head 
rested. Rising I placed my feet on this mark and 
lay down again, repeating this process over and 
over until I reached the shrine. This pilgrimage 
was quite as useless as the first so far as I was 
able to judge, and when I once more reached the 
priest's house he put me in charge of his cows. 



CHAPTEE yill. 

SERVING A PRIEST FOR ETERNAL LIFE. 

^^T FOUND my new master very exacting and 
JL unmerciful. The more I watched his every- 
day life the more I was convinced that he was not 
sinless. One day a company of devotees were 
bowing down in most abject posture worshipping 
him, and he gave them assurance, as he had given 
me, that he could forgive sins because he l^imself 
was sinless, when I overheard a com]3any of dooms 
(low caste people) bitterly denouncing the ^ Great 
One of the Earth,' because he had cheated a poor 
woman out of all her little property, and had also 
taken possession of a poor man's cow. The widow, 
they said, had gone to him when her husband died, 
and begged him to take charge of her pecuniary 
aifairs. He consented, and took so good care of 
her money that she never saw an anna of it her- 
self. (An anna is a coin of about three cents 
value.) The man Avho lost the cow had gone to 
the priest to have him reveal the whereabouts of 
the animal, little dreaming that the wily priest had 
it in concealment. He paid a good price to have 
the priest tell him where he could find the cow, 
(72) 



SERVING A PRIEST FOR ETERNAL LIFE. 73 

but for a Avonder that day the priest was not all- 
wise and could reveal nothing. 

" One very hot day while watching the cows as 
they grazed near the edge of the jungle I fell 
asleep, and while I slept a huge Bengal tiger 
carried oif one of the cows. I knew the priest 
would be wild with rage when he came to know 
of his loss, and I was tempted to run a^vay and 
leave the rest of the cows to the mercy of tlie 
tigers, rather than to encounter his burst of temper. 
However, my conscience would not allow me to do 
this, and I drove the herd home and frankly told 
the priest what had happened. He seized me by 
the hair, and holding me firmly against a banyan 
tree, he deliberately rubbed red pepper in my eyes. 
In vain did I plead for mercy — his eyes glared 
like those of a savage beast, and he rejoiced over 
my intense suifering. After this event nothing 
could induce me to remain longer as a learner of 
the Hindoo religion. For how could a man so 
cruel and brutal know anything about the mercy 
and forgiveness for which I had so long worked 
and waited ? I had heard of a Mohammedan 
teacher living some miles west of the priest's 
home, and I made my way to him. When he 
told me that he did not believe in idol worship, 
but that the prophet Mohammed was his teacher, 
and as he had given up five years of his life to 
holy contemplation in a cave, at the end of which 



74 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

time the angel Gabriel had appeared to him in 
visions and revelations ; surely this one leader must 
be a safe guide to follow. ' There is but one God, 
and Mohammed is his Prophet/ devoutly re- 
marked this, my new-found Mussulman teacher. I 
was rejoiced to hear words from the Koran, for 
they were more like what a true god might say to 
me, than all the sloJcas of the Hindoo Shasters. 
And so I stayed with this teacher three months. 
Alas ! I was obliged to witness the wicked and 
licentious lives of the followers of Mohammed. 
I heard the teacher tell them that it is right to 
steal from those who would not believe as he and 
they did, and even to murder them in order to 
advance the Mussulman religion. How could these 
people help me to find a higher and a better life, 
when they themselves were worse in their conduct 
than the Hindoos? And I was convinced that 
the simple hill peo2)le among whom I had been 
brought up were kinder hearted and lived far 
better lives than either the Hindoos or Moham- 
medans. AVlien I reached my home on the moun- 
tains I found that my foster-father had long ago 
left for parts unknown. I sat down on the 
ground where my mother's chang had stood during 
the days of her funeral, and thought of her as the 
best example for me to follow, of any I had yet 
found. I was completely discouraged with the result 
of my investigations for the truth. That night I 



SERVING A PRIEST FOR ETERNAL LIFE. 75 

slept under the great tree where I had so often 
made my offerings in the days of my childhood. 
And I dreamed that a man came to me and said, 
'Korno Siga, I have a book for yon.' That 
dream impressed me so forcibly that I went through 
the village inquiring of every one if he or she 
could tell me of any one who had a book. They 
all laughed at me and asked sarcastically, ^and 
what would a monkey of the forest do with a 
book?' But I was seriously in earnest in this 
matter, and went from village to village, every- 
where making the inquiry, * Have you a book ? ' 
At length on the outskirts of one of the villages I 
came upon a man who lived alone in his little hut. 
He sat in the open door, and ere I had put my 
question to him, I saw that he held in his hand a 
book. 

" ^ What book is that ? ' I eagerly asked ; Ms it 
for me ? ' 

" ' Yes, it is for you and for every one. It is the 
Shaster of the white people.' 

"Saying this he opened the book and read, 
' God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life.' And 
' Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest.' 

" I asked the reader who it was that had spoken 
such precious words. 



76 KORNO SIGA, THE MOtfNTAIN CHIEP, 

" He replied, ' These are the words of Christ, the 
Saviour of the world. He revealed himself to us 
by leading a sinless and holy life here in our 
Orient ; he showed us God in human flesh, offered 
up his own life for us, and has now gone to get 
mansions ready for his children, i. 6., those who 
obey and love him; and he is coming again to 
receive us and welcome us to those mansions/ 

" I asked him to read over and over again that 
cordial invitation, until I could repeat the words 
as Christ had said them. 

^^ Then I begged him to let me have the Shaster 
for my own, but he said that a hundred rupees 
could not buy that precious book from him, for he 
loved it better than his own life. He told me 
also that his name was Phrang, and that he had 
been a student in a Christian school, and had been 
taught by the white teachers. His wife and all of 
his relatives had forsaken him because he had 
])ecome a Christian. He was in the village trying 
to induce other young men to enter that Christian 
school, and he should return with four such on the 
morrow. I begged of him a native primer, which 
had in it some quotations from the Christian Shas- 
ter. Many times during that night I arose from 
my bed and prayed to the primer, hoping that in 
this way Christ might speak to me through the 
little book, and tell me how I might come to him 
and find his promised rest. 



SERVING A PRIEST FOR ETERNAL LIFE, 77 

"Early the next morning I went again to 
Phrang's house, hoping that he had not yet started 
for the mission station. Alas ! I found him in 
the last stages of cholera. He had been attacked 
during the night and had not been able to call in 
any one to help him. Indeed, there were fcAV of 
his friends who would have helped him if they had 
known of his illness, for was he not in their esti- 
mation a Christian dog? 

"As T entered the room he pointed to a little 
bamboo shelf where lay his precious Shaster, and 
when I handed it to him he clasped it to his heart, 
and handed it back to me, signifying that it was 
mine, and raising his hand heavenward, he died. 
I went in search of the young men who were to 
have gone with him to the mission school. But 
when they heard that he had died of cholera, they 
decided that he must have been a bad man because 
the cholera god had killed him ; and they refused 
to learn the white man^s religion lest they too 
should be killed. And so I have come alone 
bringing with me Phrang's Shaster.'^ Saying this 
he slowly unwrapped the book from many folds of 
his turban, and asked if he might be allowed to 
have it for his own. When told that he was now 
its rightful owner he made his salaam and said : 
" O teachers of Christ's religion, give me a place 
among you, that I may learn the truth." 

All present were deeply moved at his e'arnest 



78 KORNO SIGA, THE MOVNTAIlSr CHIEF, 

plea. One aged man went eagerly forward and 
lifted Korno Siga's arm and carefully examined it, 
exclaiming, " This young man is my adopted son, 
for here on his arm is the mark by which I shall 
always know him, as my successor to my office as 
a chief among the hill men." Korno Siga had 
indeed found his foster-parent, and they were now 
both seeking the truth as revealed by Christ. 

Through what devious ways had they been led 
during those years of separation ! Who of us 
shall say there is not a divinity that rules over the 
inhabitants of India as well as of our own fair 
Columbia ? 

" For God through ways they have not known 
Shall lead his own." 



CHAPTER IX. 

EARTHQUAKES AND WHITE ANTS. 

THE two destructive agents to houses and all 
household goods in Assam are earthquakes 
and white ants ; and I propose in this chapter to 
tell you something about them. 

One Sunday afternoon a large company of our 
people were gathered in our compound, and we 
were talking to them of the wonders of nature and 
the wisdom and love of nature's God. 

The Bible lesson for the young men of the Nor- 
mal School that day had been in the book of Job 
at the thirty-seventh chapter, and this theme had 
interested not only them, but also the large number 
of visitors from the surrounding country. 

Suddenly our conversation was interrupted by 
a death-like stillness which seemed to pervade all 
things.. Not a leaf quivered and the air seemed 
destitute of all vitality ; a stillness so awe-inspiring 
that dumb creatures as well as human beings 
gazed helplessly about with a nameless fear. This 
was followed by a rumbling noise like a heavy 
freight train in the distance; finally came the 
majestic quaking of mother Earth. Huge forest 

(79) 



80 KOBNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

trees swayed to and fro and vast sides of the 
mountain were broken off, and fell with a thunder- 
ing crash into the valley below. Houses reeled 
like drunken men, and the ground rose in undula- 
tions like sea-waves during a calm. The current 
in the little river near our bungalow set up stream, 
and the earth in places opened up and sent forth a 
strong sulphurous odor. The natives far and near 
had fled from their houses when the first warning 
of the earthquake came, and many hundreds 
gathered in our mission compound, whither we 
too had gone when the house began to rock. It 
was ever thus in times of danger with this people 
of Assam : they would seek protection of the mis- 
sionary with an inward feeling that the Great 
Spirit was in sympathy with us, and that they 
Avere safer on mission ground than elsewhere. 

It soon became impossible for any one to stand, 
and as we sat upon the ground, each looked at the 
other wondering what would come next. Our 
native nurse, Padma, had taken little Ruth into 
the nursery and was singing a weird lullaby song 
to her when the earthquake began. We called to 
her to run with the baby into the compound with 
us, but when she got as far as the verandah she 
stood paralyzed with fear, and I was obliged to 
take the child from her, while Mr. Marston con- 
ducted Padma to the bottom of the steps just as 
they fell. She too fell near a tree and clasping its 



EARTHQUAKES AND WHITE ANTS. 81 

roots she began praying to the Hindoo gods. And 
this was the form of her j)rayer : " O Ram, 
Krishna, and Shiva, have mercy upon us and make 
the elephant stop shaking himself ! '^ The Hin- 
doos of Assam believe that the earth is flat, and 
that it stands on the back of an elephant. He has 
never given himself a good thorough shaking up 
since the earth was created ; when he does, then 
the end of all things will come. The present 
quaking was only a moderate shaking of his head, 
and all of the little earthquakes are simply a 
winking of his eyelashes and a tremor of the hair 
in the centre of his forehead ! The last named 
are used by the native jewellers in India to sur- 
round their ornaments of silver filigree work and 
lend quite a pretty effect to their jewels. 

As shock after shock came in quick succession, I 
began to fear that the final great shaking had 
indeed come. The goats, cows and ponies were 
running in frantic alarm from one point of the 
compass to another, and it w^as quite frightful to 
hear their cries of distress. The natives were 
moaning and praying all about us. Of all the 
people gathered there, only two were perfectly calm 
and self-possessed, Mr. Marston and Korno Siga. 
Mr. Marston said quietly, '^We will read from 
God^s word to his children, for he is saying to us now, 
^ Be still, and know that I am God,' '^ and turning 
to the ninetieth Psalm, Korno Siga read in clear 
6 



82 KOBNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

full tones : " Lord, thou hast been our dwelling- 
place in all generations. Before the mountains were 
brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth 
and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, 
thou art God." 

Thus reassured, the young men of the school 
and all the converts so far overcame their fears as 
to join in that grand old hymn, " God moves in a 
mysterious way," etc. 

Christianity seen thus in contrast with the wild 
and frantic cries of the heathen, convinces the most 
skeptical that there is a sustaining inherent power 
in Christianity such as characterizes no other 
religion. 

We could not sleep in our own bungalow that 
night, but took refuge in a native hut. During 
the night we had seventeen more shocks, and dur- 
ing the following fortnight we had forty-eight 
earthquakes, more or less severe. Weeks passed 
before we dared to disrobe ourselves for a good 
night's rest ; we expected any moment to be obliged 
to seek the open air for safety. Our little ones 
asked pleadingly : " Can we never go to bed like 
white folks any more? Have we turned into 
natives since the earthquake ? " To one who has 
never experienced the sensations produced by an 
almost constant tremor of the earth, it is quite im- 
possible for me to describe our feelings during that 
ever-to-be-remembered fortnight. I often found 



EARTHQUAKES AND WHITE ANTS. 83 

myself quoting, " If the foundations be destroyed, 
what can the righteous do ? " 

But at length the feeling of security came back 
to us and we resumed our former habits of life, 
thankful that the " elephant had stopped shaking 
himself." 

Personally, there is nothing that so thoroughly 
frightens me as an earthquake. I have experienced 
many perils by land and by sea, but none of them 
moves me like an earthquake. One of our aged 
Christian converts used to say, ^^The Marston 
Mem Saheb is a brave woman and can face almost 
any danger, but when an earthquake comes along 
she can run as fast as anybody.'' This old man 
was having prayers at our house one evening and 
during his prayer an earthquake shook the house 
severely. When he arose from his knees, he found 
that his whole audience had run away and left him 
praying alone ! 

He did not know the unsafe condition of our 
house as we did. Every bungalow throughout 
that whole section of country was more or less in 
ruins after that severe earthquake, and it required 
much labor and expense before our house was 
again a safe retreat. Besides we had lost nearly 
all of our dishes and glassware and bottled medi- 
cines, as our almwahs (or cupboards) had all been 
thrown down and badly demolished. 

Our white ants, termites or wood- worms as they 



84 KORNO SIGA, TKE 3I0UNTAIN CBIEF. 

are variously called, are capable of devouring any- 
thing except metals and stones. We have in 
Assam the usual five classes among the termites, 
viz. : males, females, workers, neuters and soldiers. 
The males and females also have four long wings 
nearly equal in length. Eighty thousand is the 
estimated number of eggs which one female lays in 
twenty-four hours. The workers are wingless and 
are by far the most numerous. The neuters have 
four wing-cases on the thorax. This class waits 
upon the king and queen and takes care of the 
young ants. The soldiers are similar in appearance 
to the neuters, but are more fully developed and 
have very large jaws, and are the military force of 
the white ant tribe. 

The houses built by the termites are of great 
size and have long spiral passages connecting with 
a subterranean abode. Their cones are often ten 
or twelve feet high, relatively as large for them as 
buildings five times the height of the Egyptian 
pyramids would be for human beings, and are 
built of earth which has been softened in the jaws 
of the workers. This quickly dries and forms a 
most substantial ant structure. Their habitations 
abound everywhere in the jungles, and every avail- 
able article which is consumable falls a prey to 
these destructive creatures. They will devour any 
soft wood tree, root and branch. They are quite 
as industrious as the bee and quickly rebuild their 



EARTHQUAKES AND WHITE ANTS. 85 

structures if they are allowed to do so. Snakes 
and birds devour these ants with a relish, and the 
natives consider them quite a dainty dish after 
they have been roasted. When our rainy season is 
about setting in, we often see myriads of the 
winged ants filling the air, but most of them are 
destroyed when the rain commences. The workers 
are always on the lookout at this time for a king 
and queen, and if a pair of these winged or perfect 
ants escape death from the Avaters, they become 
henceforth the royal pair and the founders of a 
new colony. It is exceedingly interesting to watch 
the founding of a colony of Avhite ants. There 
are many chambers and galleries in their houses. 
In one, the queen is imprisoned, where she is waited 
upon by numerous neuters whose apartments open 
from the queen^s. These attendants carry oiF the 
eggs as soon as they are laid, and for this alone 
eighty thousand trips are required in twenty-four 
hours. The eggs are stored in rooms, and when 
the young ants are hatched the neuters take care 
of them. There are various perforated passages 
leading to the nurseries, store-rooms, ground-floor 
and underground entrances. The pregnant female 
is five inches long and two-thirds of an inch wide, 
^. e., she is very many times as large as the workers. 
(See note, p. 87.) The bite of the soldiers is severe 
and painful and much dreaded by residents in 
Assam. These insects are fearfully destructive to 



86 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

our houses and furniture, and they will secretly 
eat out the interior of the legs of our furniture and 
the posts of our houses until nothing but a shell is 
left. They also devour clothing of all kinds. 
During the first year of our sojourn in the country 
we stored our clothing for the cold season in large 
trunks and boxes which were not tin-lined ; and 
when we came to examine them we found not a 
Vestige of anything that we could recognize. A 
few scraps of blankets and cloaks were left, but 
were so covered over with the new earth and saliva 
of these white ants that we could recognize neither 
color nor texture. We resolved that we would 
ferret out their habitations and miserably destroy 
their city. After digging twenty feet in the 
ground we came upon her royal majesty, the queen 
of the colony. She was an ugly white worm five 
inches or more long, and bore no resemblance to 
her numerous progeny except in the shape of the 
head and fore-legs. After killing her the colony 
rapidly dispersed and doubtless went off to join 
themselves to some other queen. I need not add 
that we did not go into mourning over the queen 
and the dispersion of her subjects. 

It is not an unusual thing for a piece of furni- 
ture which has all the outward appearance of 
solidity suddenly to sink to the floor, and upon 
examination prove to be nothing but a thin shell 
from which the whole interior has been gnawed 



EA R THQ UA KES A ND WHITE ANTS. 87 

out by these termites.* Houses fall in the same 
way, unless we select the very hardest of wood for 
the posts. In Assam we use the hal, or the teak- 
wood for posts, all other kinds being too soft. 
The natives use the bamboo for their little huts ; 
this is a hard wood, but not large enough for the 
European houses. 

* " The Termitidse are almost all inhabitants of the tropics, 
only a few comparatively small species being found in 
temperate climates. These species occur in southern Europe, 
one of which (Termes lucifugus) is abundant in some parts of 
France. . . . Another [T. flavicollis) is a North African spe- 
cies, . . . and the third (T.fiavipes) appears to have been in- 
troduced from South America." They are found in Ja- 
maica, and a ground-living species, the celebrated 2h'mes 
bellicosus, of South Africa, are very destructive. 

In the egg-laying season the eggs are developed in such 
enormous numbers that the abdomen of the insect becomes 
quite helpless, merely consuming food and producing eggs. 
See Prof. P. M. Duncan's ''Natural History," Vol. VI., pp. 
136-138. 



CHAPTER X. 

AN ASSAMESE FAIRY TALE. 

PADMA, our children's nurse, whose name, by 
the way, means a lily, though she was the 
blackest lily I ever saw, was never weary of tell- 
ing fairy tales. Some of them were very foolish 
and hardly worth writing out for the children of 
a civilized country, as they had to do mostly with 
the exploits of the million of gods and goddesses 
of the Hindoos. We always insisted upon hearing 
these stories ourselves before our children should 
be regaled by them, as we well knew that the 
Hindoo children were told most frightful stories 
iu order to make them go quietly to bed. I have 
often heard a Hindoo mother tell her child, that if 
it opened its mouth to say another word, a jackal 
or a tiger would eat it up at once. 

The following fairy tale is one of her best, and 
its lesson is good enough for children of every 
land. 

Ram Singh was a very selfish boy, who would 

always take the best of everything for himself. 

Early in life he decided that he would live for 

himself alone and never do anything to help 

(88) 



AN ASSAMESE FAIRY TALE. 89 

another person, whatever the need might be. He 
worked very hard indeed, but his labor was all 
for himself, and the more he toiled the poorer he 
grew. At the age of forty he found himself with 
a wife and twelve children, and not a single rupee, 
anna, nor pice to buy food and clothes for them. 
" The gods are unjust,'' he said, ^' and I will go to 
the wise man of the temple and learn my fate." 
And so he made his way through the dense jungle 
filled with wild beasts, to the temple where the 
wise man lived. On the road he met a camel 
with two sacks of treasure on his back. The 
poor animal seemed utterly exhausted, and leaned 
heavily against a rubber tree to rest. He had 
been wandering twelve years, having been lost 
from a caravan, and during all these years had 
found no one to direct him. 

^^ Where are you going ? " asked the camel. 

" To seek my fate,'' the selfish man replied. 

"Ask mine too," begged the camel. " Woe is 
me." 

Then the selfish man travels on until he comes 
to a great river in which is a crocodile. 

" Take me over the river," said the man. 

" I will," said the crocodile, " but first tell me 
whither you are going." 

" The gods have been cruel and unjust to me, 
and I go to the temple to ask why my fate is so 
hard, and I so very, very poor." 



90 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

"Ask my fate too, for I have had a burning 
pain in my stomach for twelve years, and I can 
get no relief. Woe is me/^ moaned the croco- 
dile. 

" I will ask your fate too/' said the man, and he 
hurried on. 

And as he journeyed on he came to a tiger, a 
royal Bengal man-eater, lying in the thicket in 
great pain, and there were precious stones and rare 
treasures strewed all about him, which had belonged 
to the man he had eaten. 

" Where are you going ? " 

" To the temple of fate, to talk with the wise 
man." 

"Ask my fate too, for I have had this thorn in 
my foot for twelve years, and I can find no com- 
fort or help anywhere. Woe is me." 

" I will," answered the selfish man as he started 
on to the temple of fate. 

There the w^ise old man asked him, "What 
seek you here ? " 

" I seek my fate. I have a poor wife and twelve 
poverty-stricken children, and I am very, very 
poor." 

" Then you must have been living for yourself 
all these years. Go home and think only of mak- 
ing others rich, and you will surely become rich 
yourself." 

Then he asked the fate of the poor camel. 



AN ASSA3IESE FAIRY TALE. 91 

"■ Take the sacks off his back, and both of you 
will be relieved. Why did you not do it before ? " 
" I was thinking only of myself 
Then he asked the fate of the crocodile. 
^^ Give him herb tea, and both of you will be 
relieved. Why did you not do it before ? " 
" I was thinking only of myself 
"And what shall be the fate of the tiger ? " 
" Take the thorn out of his foot, and both of 
you will be relieved." 

The man returned, took the thorn from the 
tiger's foot, and as compensation received all of 
the precious stones and treasures which were 
strewn about him. He gathered herbs and made 
a tea, and gave to the crocodile for the pain in his 
stomach. The crocodile threw up the tea, and 
along with it a diamond of priceless value, the 
celebrated diamond of India, and this became the 
property of the once selfish man. He lifted the 
two sacks from the camel's back, and they also 
were bestowed upon him. And the poor man 
went back to his family a rich man, for he that 
helps others is sure to be helped himself. 



CHAPTER XI. 

KOENO SIGA AS A STUDENT. 

NEVER have missionaries welcomed to their 
school a more earnest, persevering student 
than Korno Siga proved to be. After he had 
learned all he could about his own language, he set 
about the ancient Sanscrit, which is the classical 
language of India. He learned to read the Hin- 
doo Shasters in that language, that he might better 
compare them with the Christian Bible. Often I 
have gone during the small hours of the night and 
found him still poring over his books, and when 
I begged him to put them aside and go to bed, he 
would reply, " let me foUoAV out this subject a lit- 
tle further, for it is more interesting to me than 
any other on earth." He wrote out a long list of 
moral sayings of the Shasters, and opposite each he 
placed the infinitely higher moral precepts of the 
Bible. He wrote out also the history of Krishna, 
the Hindoo incarnation who is claimed to be one 
and the same as Christ. 

Ivor no Siga also made a careful study of the 
Koran and Moliammedanism as he saw it exem- 
plified in the lives of the Mussulmans about him. 
(92) 



KORNO SIGA AS A STUDENT. 93 

He made frequent trips to his native village, and 
returning brought other young men with him 
from the hill tribes to enter the Normal School. 
This school was now well established, and was 
generously aided by the English government. 
During the second year of Korno Siga's stay in the 
school he was attacked with cholera, that scourge 
of India, which finds its origin in the valley of the 
Ganges, and from thence spreads over all India. 
Henry and I did all that human care and kindness 
could accomplish for him. Our knowledge of 
medicine was considerable, and we were exceed 
ingly anxious that it should be effectual with 
our beloved mountain chief. He suffered intensely 
from the contraction of the muscles and could only 
get relief by being most thoroughly rubbed with 
stimulating liniment. After giving him freely of 
'^ Squibb's Cholera Medicine," which every mis- 
sionary ought to be supplied with in India, we 
succeeded in checking the disease. But having 
lost so much of the watery portion of the blood we 
feared that he could not rally. Hence we gave him 
copious drinks of salt water, and when he was 
threatened with collapse we gave large doses of 
calomel. We did not then know of the tannic 
acid treatment. 

After his recovery he was so grateful that he 
seemed unable to do enough for us. He realized 
that his life had been spared that he might be use- 



94 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0VNTAIN CHIEF. 

ful to his countrymen, and he finally decided that 
he ought to come out boldly and confess his alle- 
giance to Christ's religion, and the day was ap- 
pointed for his baptism. 

The evening previous to that day he came to me 
and asked if he could talk with me alone. ^^ You 
are a mother, and perhaps you can understand 
what I shall now tell you better than any one else. 
I have been thinking a great deal lately about my 
foster-mother. She was a good woman, and I 
believe that she lived just as near right as she knew 
how. She taught me to be truthful, honest, and 
kind, and I am sure that if she had heard of the 
Christian religion, she would have believed in it. 
But she never had an opportunity of hearing one 
word about Christ. If she has gone to the place 
of unhappiness and punishment, I think I ought 
to go there also and try to make her as comfortable 
as possible ! It would be very selfish of me, to 
enter eternal bliss and leave her alone in eternal 
woe. Hence I have decided not to be baptized, 
nor be a Christian, so that I may go to her and 
help her all I can." 

*^ My dear brother,'^ I replied, " do you suppose 
our kind Heavenly Father would ever treat your 
foster-mother unjustly? Eternal wretchedness 
after death arises from a sense of sin committed 
during life and a consequent remorse of conscience. 
If your mother lived up to all the light she had 



KORNO SIGA AS A STUDENT. 95 

and kept the whole law, how could she suffer from 
remorse ? You must leave the future condition of 
your mother in the hands of One who is too wise to 
err and too good to be unkind. ' He will order 
all events so that you will be abundantly satisfied.' 
The Apostle Peter said to Cornelius and his com- 
pany : ' Of a truth I perceive that God is no re- 
specter of persons, but in every nation he that 
feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted 
with him,' and then he declares to these seekers 
after the truth, Christ and the remission of sins." 

I assured Korno Siga, moreover, that with the 
instruction and additional light which he had 
received, if he should refuse the Saviour and his 
proffered atonement he would be far more sub- 
ject to punishment than his good foster-mother. 
And so on the following day he was baptized and 
was one of the most joyful of converts. He was 
the first of his tribe baptized by my husband, and 
we hoped for great usefulness from his faithful 
work among his people. Personally, I will add 
that I have never known a heathen who lived up 
to all the light he had received. Who has ? 

The Normal School opened at ten o'clock every 
morning, excepting Sunday. The opening exer- 
cises consisted of reading of the Scriptures in the na- 
tive language, a careful exposition of the truth read, 
and questioning with reference to the lesson of the 
preceding day. Then all bowed in prayer while 



1)6 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

my husband led them audibly. The young men 
were all very fond of music and were never tired 
of singing our sweet Christian hymns. Geograj^hy, 
arithmetic, grammar and history were the studies 
usually pursued during the ordinary three years' 
course. 

But the people of Assam are naturally a religious 
people, and much of the time was spent in study- 
ing Christianity as compared with Vedaism, Brah- 
manism and Hindooism. This last named religion 
like Buddhism is a protest against Brahmanism, 
but differs from Buddhism in that it is theistic, 
while Buddhism says, '^ There is no God : the hope 
of humanity is in itself 

^' The Indian mind/^ says Leighton Parks, in 
his ^ Star in the East,' " has always shrunk from 
materialism, because it leads to atheism ; Hindooism 
is saturated with theism.'' It is impossible for the 
Hindoo mind to see any beauty in annihilation, 
and the question is ever being asked, '^ If a man 
die, shall he live again f " 

Korno Siga, although a mountaineer, was in- 
tensely interested in the study of the religions of 
the world, and the more he studied, the more 
firmly rooted was he in the belief that God had 
not left himself without witness among the nations 
of the earth ; and when a group of hill men or of 
Hindoos came to talk with him, he was very fond 
of taking for his text, " The unknown god. Whom 



KORNO SIGA AS A STUDENT. 97 

therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I 
unto you." And the secret of his success in lead- 
ing his countrymen into the light was the deep 
religious experience he had himself undergone in 
coming to that light " which lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world." If we would win 
souls to Christ we must ever follow his methods 
of work, and with an infinite love and pity put 
ourselves in the place of the ignorant and benighted, 
and reason with them from their own standpoint. 
Lyman Abbott beautifully expresses this thought : 
^' The missionary movement is not merely a 
philanthropic movement; it does not derive its 
power from a mere sentiment of pity for men and 
fear for their future. Its inspiration lies in a 
spiritual sense of Avhat it is for a child of God to 
live in ignorance of his Father and in isolation 
from him, and in the hopefulness caught from 
faith in and communion with a God whose faith 
in the possibilities of man and whose hope for and 
love towards him are infinite and inexhaustible. 
As the church has studied the life and character 
of Christ it has caught his spirit ; it has imbibed 
his life and followed his example." 
7 



CHAPTER XII. 



KOENO SIGA's bride. 



AMONG the girls who had come to me from 
the hills for instruction was a bright, pretty 
one whom we called Kache. She was from one 
of the remote villages of Korno Siga's tribe, and 
was of an independent family who had never been 
slaves. 

When the Burmese invaded Assam, there were 
certain families among the hill tribes who rendered 
such valuable service to the Assamese army, that 
they and their descendants were made forever ex- 
empt from slavery. As a sign of their independ- 
ence a blue line of India ink was traced from the 
vertex of the frontal bone to the bottom of the 
chin. Since 1826, when the English government 
took possession of the country, the slavery system 
has been abolished, and the blue line only tells the 
story of former cruelty and barbarism. But the 
descendants of these independent families still re- 
tain the blue line. Kache had the blue line most 
clearly drawn upon her face, but she certainly bore 
no other mark of aristocracy. Her hair had 
never known the comb nor brush ; indeed she had 
(08) 



KORNO SIGA'S BRIDE. 99 

never seen a comb. Her fingers had always served 
her in that line, so far as keeping rnbbish and 
twigs out of her hair was concerned. Her cloth- 
ing was meagre and filthy, when she put in her 
appearance at the mission bungalow. She had 
travelled in company with an old woman of her 
tribe, and their journey had been through dense 
jungles infested with wild animals. She had 
heard of my school for girls through one of Mr. 
Marston's preaching tours on the hills. He had 
spent tw^o days at Kache's village, and had told 
the people of our desire to have them educated 
and christianized. He had urged the parents to 
send their girls to school as well as their boys, 
that they too might know a better life than the 
mere animal existence which was then theirs. 

Kache listened to the strange words of the white 
man, as she stood behind one of the little bamboo 
huts, and she rejoiced to hear that there was a 
religion which recognized the worth of woman, 
and permitted her to learn from the sacred books. 
She resolved that she would some day seek the 
missionary's school, and learn to be something 
more than a wild animal of the jungle. The 
journey from her home to our mission station re- 
quired eleven days, and the road was only a foot- 
path through the dense jungle. 

At night she and the old woman Avere obliged 
to climb the trees, and tie themselves to the limbs, 



100 KORNO SWA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

lest they should fall while asleep, and be devoured 
by the ravenous beasts of prey. All night long 
the Bengal tigers roared, the jackals howled, and 
the bears growled in the forest about them. When 
the morning light came, however, they hied them- 
selves away to their lairs in the depths of the jun- 
gle. There are no hotels in that wild country, 
and Kache must needs carry with her, her mat for 
her bed, and dishes in which to cook her rice and 
dahl (split peas). And thus through many hard- 
ships and dangers did she reach the mission sta- 
tion and the bungalow of the missionary. I was 
seated on the broad verandah which surrounded 
our bungalow, when she came up the steps and 
announced herself in this fashion : " I have come 
to learn to be somebody." The filthiest of all 
filthy creatures, with vermin creeping over her, she 
certainly looked as though she was quite a nobody. 
Seating herself upon the verandah floor (what did 
she know of chairs ?) she commenced shaking out 
her coarse black hair, while ever and anon she would 
seize a piece of cotton, a leaf, stick or one of the 
vermin, and fling it from her. 

Changing my position so that I might not come 
witliin range of her missiles, I asked : "And you 
wish to be somebody, do you ? AYhat do you 
mean by that ? " 

" I want to learn to read and write, and become 
a white Christian." 



kORNO SIGA'S BRIDiJ. lOl 

" Cleanliness is next to godliness, and if you 
want to be a wliite Christian, the first thing for 
you to do, is to bathe and put on clean garments. 
When you have done that we will talk about your 
being somebody." 

But Kache most vehemently protested against 
making so complete a change in her personal 
appearance. ^' I cannot bathe ; neither my mother, 
grandmother, nor any of my ancestors ever did 
such a thing ; and how can I depart from the cus- 
toms of my forefathers ? " 

I assured her that I should never receive her 
into the school unless she complied with these 
requirements. I threw open the door of the 
school-room and showed her my neat-looking class 
of girls who had come to me looking just as she 
looked ; and soap, water, and clean clothes had 
wrought the difference, I assured her. 

" If I should go back to my village looking as 
they do, every one would make sport of me and 
drive me out of the place. Besides I did not 
come all this long way to hear such words as you 
speak. I came to hear about the white man's 
religion. May I not sit on the verandah every 
day, and listen as you teach the people who come 
to you each day ? '' 

I assured her that she might do this even though 
she was so filthy, but that she must not enter the 
school. Day after day she came and sat with the 



102 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

village people and listened to the words of Jesus, 
that oriental Teacher who taught as never man 
taught ; but she still strongly refused to bathe or 
put on the clean clothes which I had in readiness 
for her. 

One day she came to the bungalow and as I 
was not on the verandah to meet her, she made 
her way to my dressing-room. Facing the door 
of the room was a large mirror, and w^ien Kache 
saw her image reflected there she started back and 
seemed much frightened. 

^^ What Avild beast do you keep in that place ? " 
she asked, looking towards the mirror. 

I assured her that there were no wild beasts 
about our house — that she was looking into a 
mirror which showed her just what she looked 
like. I asked her if she had not often seen her 
image in tlie water. 

She said she had, but it did not look half so 
frightful as that creature in the mirror. 

I told her if she would take the bath and put on 
clean clothes, she could quite materially improve 
" the creature in the mirror ; " that wild animals 
of the jungle looked better than she, for they are 
clean. I urged the matter upon her in the 
strongest of terms, assuring her that she would 
always be glad she took the step after once the 
decision was made. After much argument and 
hesitation, she made the decision I so ardently 



KORNO SIGA'S BRIDE. 103 

hoped for, and went to the little river near our 
house for her bath. An old Hindoo woman who 
had become a Christian went with her, and after the 
bath, she cut Kache's hair and combed it for her. 
It was utterly impossible to get a comb through it, 
on account of the accumulated debris of years. In 
a couple of hours Kache returned to the house 
clad in her clean white garments ; lier hair had been 
wet in mustard oil, after the custom of the Assam- 
ese Hindoo women, and plastered tight to her 
head. She was so entirely transformed tliat I 
Avished her to see herself again in the looking- 
glass, and I led her to the dressing-room, and bade 
her look once more upon the wild creature she had 
feared. She was more than pleased with the 
apparition before her, and with a broad grin ex- 
claimed, "How pretty I am now ! Surely I am 
a Christian, for I am clean." 

I tried to explain to her the difference between 
physical cleanliness and soul purity, and told her 
that she could never be a true Christian until she 
had received as thorough a cleansing of her heart, 
as she had just had of her body ; that the Bible 
and God's Holy Spirit could show her the con- 
dition of her heart more thoroughly than the 
mirror and the sunlight had shown her physical 
uncleanness. " The Christian religion makes one 
clean inside as well as outside, and the soul soiled 
with sin must be washed in that fountain which 



104 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

Christ has opened for sin^ and must put on a robe 
of Christ's righteousness before one can be a true 
Christian.' ' Kache did not comprehend all these 
words at that time. She entered the school the 
next day and showed an eager desire for a knowl- 
edge of books, and was a most persevering student. 
When she had been only four months in the 
school, one Sunday morning she heard a sermon 
which Mr. Marston preached from the text, " If 
any man he in Christ, he is sl new creature,'' etc. 
This sermon made a deep impression upon her, and 
during the afternoon she came to me and asked 
me to explain it to her more fully. I reminded 
her of her looking-glass experience, and how little 
she realized her need of a bath until she caught 
one good view of herself. " God's word of truth 
is the looking-glass of the soul, and you have had 
a view of your spiritual condition in that looking- 
glass this morning, and when one sees the need of 
a heavenly cleansing, the Bible points to the 
fountain of Christ's righteousness and says, * Wash 
ye, make you clean.'" Is. 1 : 16. 

^' But where is that fountain, and who will take 
me to it ? " she eagerly asked. Long and patiently 
did I talk to her during the hours of that Sunday 
afternoon, of him who is the Way, the Truth and the 
Life ; of his divine power to generate in the sinful 
heart a new and holy purpose ; of that wisdom 
which comes from above and is known only by 



KORNO SIGA'S BRIDE. iOK 

those who are obedient to the heavenly vision. Christ 
himself has plainly said to us, that if we will do his 
will we shall know of the doctrine. No wonder 
that so many grope in darkness, and wander into 
materialism and agnosticism, when they try, by 
their own weak reason, to find out a truth which 
can only be known by obedience. At length 
Kache seemed to catch a glimpse of Christ's 
mercy and loving kindness, and asked me to pray 
with her that she might be an obedient child of 
this wise and loving Friend. 

" What does he want me to do first for him ? " 
" You have repented of all your past sins ; you 
believe his holy word — that word says ^believe 
and be baptized.^ Baptism is the public sign by 
which you say to the world that your heart has 
had the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Is not this 
your first step ? '^ 

That evening, as our little band of Christians 
met for prayer, Kache told them of her experience, 
and how she believed that she was now a new 
creature in Christ. One old deacon in the church 
who believed in bodily suifering and penance for 
sin, and who had absorbed a great deal of Hin- 
dooism into his Christianityj asked Kache if she 
had spent three days and three nights wrestling in 
agony for her forgiveness, and he assured her that 
unless she had spent as long a time at least as 
Jonah was in the whale's belly, she could not be a 



106 KORNO SIGA, THE FOUNTAIN CHIEf. 

Christian. Mr. Marston and I were obliged to 
laugh heartily at this novel statement, and Mro 
Marston asked the old man if his father kept him 
three days and three nights in torture, before he 
would forgive his boyish disobedience. "Carlyle 
says, ^ repentance is the noblest emotion of AN'hich 
a human being is capable,"' said my husband; 
" and is our God a vindictive being who delights 
in torturing his children ? Xo, no, he is like a 
kind, loving, forgiving parent, who is delighted to 
forgive an erring child and receive him into the 
fullest confidence." When Ivache made her 
public espousal of the Christian religion, a glow 
of heavenly peace and joy shone in her face, as 
one after another of the native church members 
gathered about her to welcome her to their Chris- 
tian brotherhood. 

Korno Siga was among this number, and I 
observed that he welcomed her a little more cor- 
dially than the others, with which fact I was well 
pleased, though I kept my thoughts to myself. 
The morning after her baptism, Kache came to me 
and asked if she might start for her native village 
that day, as she was in a hurry to tell her parents 
and friends of this " wonderful religion which 
makes one clean outside and inside.'^ I gave my 
consent for her to go in company with the same 
old woman who came with her, and who had been 
helping me in the care of household mnllcrs 



KORNO SIGA'S BRIDE. 10^ 

during the time Kache had been in school. 
Korno Siga objected to the two women going 
alone, and was on the point of offering to go him- 
self, when I anticipated him and appointed Rong 
Bong and his wife to go with them. Kache took 
her Bible and hymn-book with her, and faithfully 
did she use them during the weeks she remained 
in her native village. Great was the surprise of 
the villagers at her changed personal appearance, 
and greatly did they wonder at the new strange 
words she spake to them. She told them how she 
had learned of Christ, and urged them also to be 
obedient to this divine preacher who had become 
her personal Saviour. So great was her influence 
among her people that she persuaded a number 
of the other girls of her village to accompany her 
when she returned to the school. In this school tliey 
not only learned of the Christian religion, but were 
taught all of the common branches of knowledge, 
and were trained in housekeeping and needle-work. 
About a year after her visit to her native village, 
Korno Siga came to me, and begged that she might 
be given to him in marriage. I asked him how 
he knew she loved him and would marry him. 

" Oh, I know she loves me ; for she always 
blushes and looks down when I offer her the betel 
nut.'' The next time I met Kache, I asked her 
what she thought of Korno Siga as a teaclier 
among her people; would they like him, and 



108 KORNO SIGA, THE 310 UH TAIN CHIEF. 

would he be useful among them if I should send 
him to live among them ? Kache's manner told 
the whole story, and I gave permission to Koruo 
Siga to wed her. They went after their marriage 
and lived in Kache's village, and spent their time 
in teaching the ignorant people knowledge, useful 
and practical. Above all, the good tidings of 
salvation and an immortality beyond the grave 
was the theme of their constant conversation, and 
much good did they accomplish by their faithful 
work. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SNAKE-CHARMERS AND ROYAL BENGAL TIGERS. 

THE boa is the largest and most powerful of the 
serpents of Assam. Some of these serpents 
are thirty feet in length, and can masticate and 
swallow a buffalo. They first crush the bones 
thoroughly and then covering them with saliva 
they lengthen the carcass until it is small enough 
for them to swallow. Frequently in our travels 
through the jungles, did we come within hearing 
of the agonizing cries of some poor beast which was 
being crushed to death by the coils of this power- 
ful serpent. When the beast is large, the boa con- 
trives to get it between himself and a tree and thus 
more readily crushes it into swallowing dimen- 
sions. Occasionally a human being is caught in 
the coils of the serpent as he is taking his bath in 
the riverc The boa winds his tail about a tree 
growing at the water's edge, and thus floats out to 
his unsuspecting victim. 

The following snake-story was told me by a 
native who solemnly assured me that it was true 
in every detail. Two men and a woman were 
travelling through the jungle, and as the universal 

(109) 



110 KOBNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

custom in Assam is for the woman to follow in 
the rear, she was the one to fall into the coils of 
the boa who laj coiled near their path. She, as 
most Avomen would have done under like circum- 
stances, set up most vigorous feminine screeches. 
The men told her to keep quiet and they would 
rescue her, and one of them who carried a coop of 
young pigeons at once offered one to the serpent 
Avhich greedily devoured it. Another and another 
were given in quick succession ; mean^^•hile the 
second man liad made his way with all speed to 
the bazaar where he bought two hundred more 
pigeons, and they continued to feed the boa until 
the third day after he had embraced the woman. 
By this time he was thoroughly gorged and releas- 
ing his hold of the woman fell to the ground and 
was quickly despatched by the natives, who had 
assembled for this purpose with immense clubs 
and other implements of death. Perhaps this is 
too big a snake-story to believe, but a native 
policeman told it to me and I repeat it to you. 

There are many water snakes in Assam, and 
some of them are very venomous. One night, 
when travelling by boat, I lifted my pillow to 
place my bunch of keys underneath it, and found 
a huge snake coiled there against which my hand 
struck. He quickly slid away and I could no- 
where find him, and I was under the necessity of 
retiring without knowing his whereabouts, though 



SNAKE- CHAR3IERS AND BENGAL TIGERS. Ill 

he had doubtless found his way into the river. I 
was not then as intimately acquainted with the 
snake family as I have since become, and must 
confess to a feminine nervousness which somewhat 
interrupted my slumbers. I dare say this form of 
nervousness dates back to that affair in the garden 
of Eden, when mother Eve met a snake and was 
worsted in the encounter. 

The russelean and the whip-snake are both ven- 
omous and are quite common in Assam. But the 
most fatally poisonous is the cobra de capello, or 
hooded snake. It frequently makes its way into 
houses, and many natives die annually from its 
bite. More than once have I heard a thud on my 
floor at night, and found it was caused by the fall- 
ing of a cobra from the thatch-covered roof, and I 
have found its slough two or three times under my 
children's bed. 

One night a terrific storm coming up suddenly, 
I hastened to close the doors and windows which 
had been left open on account of the stifling heat. 
As I entered the bath-room I heard the hiss of the 
cobra, and hastily sprang backward and went in 
search of a lamp. On returning I found a large 
cobra with uplifted trunk and widespread hood 
confronting me. I called in the chokedar (night 
watchman) and we soon succeeded in killing the 
snake. We found on closer examination that he 
had swallowed a toad, and this had made him less 



112 KORNO SIGA, THE 310UNTAIN CHIEF. 

agile than usual, and hence he had not struck me 
with his fangs when I entered the bath-room. 
Thus my life was saved by a toad. 

The Indian jugglers make various uses of this 
snake, in the wonderful feats with which they as- 
tonish the uninitiated. We had not been long in 
Assam before we were visited by the snake-charm- 
ers. Two of these men came to our door and very 
kindly informed us that the Hindoo gods had told 
them that our premises were infested by cobras ; 
and moreover, as they were the brothers of the 
cobra and servants of the gods, they had only to 
call their brothers and they would come to them. 

Mr. Marston replied, " Very well ; I will give 
you a rupee for every cobra you catch for me on 
my premises." 

The charmers took their bamboo fifes and played 
several weird airs, which made me feel that all the 
minor strains were concentrated in the fife and in 
those airs. Then ceasing their music they said in 
a sing-song tone, ^^ Come, my brother of the jungle, 
hasten to me ; I wait for you ; I avoo you with my 
music ; I call you with my voice. Come, my 
brother of the jungle, come.'' 

Very soon a large cobra came gliding from the 
edge of the grass, and lifting his head he seems to 
keep time to the music of the fife. He makes his 
way to the musician and is caught in the hands of 
the charmer. The snake strikes angrily at the 



SNAKE-CHARMERS AND BENGAL TIGERS. 113 

man's hand, and blood seems to flow freely from 
the wound. The charmer takes a little box of 
medicine from his girdle and rubs some of it on 
the wound, and, wiping away the blood, says, 
" The gods do not permit me to be poisoned by my 
brother." This performance is repeated until four 
large cobras are caught, and safely stored in the 
charmer's baskets. Then the two men came for- 
ward to tlie verandah where we were seated, and 
making a low salaam asked Mr. Marston for the 
money. 

" Give me my snakes and I will at once pay 
you for them,'' is the answer. 

To this arrangement the charmers are much op- 
posed, and rather than give up the snakes they turn 
away from the house without tlieir money. 

I need scarcely explain this proceeding by telling 
you that they were trained snakes whose fangs had 
been extracted, and the charmers had only a few 
moments before let them out of their baskets that 
they might make money by again catching them. 
The blood which seemed to come on the man's 
hand was Indian vermilion, which Avas concealed 
in a little bag in his hand. I have seen a juggler 
apparently thrust a knife through the palm of his 
hand and the blood flow most profusely. He will 
wipe it thoroughly, and shoAV the hand without a 
scratch or wound of any kind. The knife was 
made with a spring which would allow the blade 



114 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF, 

to sink back into the handle, and press upon a bag 
of vermilion in such a manner as to cause the ap- 
pearance of a stream of blood flowing over the 
hand. In the sleeve of his garment he had another 
blade, shorter by the width of his hand than the 
one attached to the knife, which he at once glued 
to the back of his hand, and in this adroit manner 
deceived the lookers-on. 

The cobra is of brownish -yellow color from three 
to four feet in length. People err who think it a 
large, powerful snake. It is feared on account of 
its venom and not for its strength. Its bite is not 
always fatal. AYe have had an opportunity of 
testing pretty thoroughly the various antidotes for 
the bite of the cobra. Our plan finally adopted 
was to ligate and cauterize at once, at the same 
time administering repeatedly large doses of whis- 
key and small doses of ammonia. The famous 
Tanjore pills, which contain each about one-fif- 
teenth grain of arsenious acid, are also very effica- 
cious in treating cobra poisoning. This pill is also 
much used in the malarial fevers of India, and is 
very happily named, as far as the Assamese are 
concerned, ^Han^^ meaning severe, and ^'jor,^ a 
fever. The name is, however, derived from the 
district in the Madras Presidency which bears 
this name. The one other remedy which has been 
conceived to be effectual is Bibron's remedy, but 
in order for this or the Tanjore pills to reach the 



SNAKE-CHARMERS AND BENGAL TIGERS. 115 

case, it must be administered immediately after the 
bite, as the poisoning is very rapidly introduced 
into the blood. 

Many hundreds of the natives of Assam die 
annually from the effect of serpent poisoning. 
The mongoose is erroneously supposed by some to 
be proof against the poison, and Europeans in 
India often keep one of these little animals about 
the premises to destroy the cobras. The fact with 
reference to this matter is, that the mongoose is so 
very agile that it can destroy the cobra before it 
can bite him, by seizing it by the back of the neck 
and destroying it instantly. The cobra has been 
known to live seven months without food. 

Adders were one of my greatest causes of 
anxiety in Assam, as some of them are of the 
exact color of the trees and shrubs, upon the limbs 
of which they are partial to basking themselves 
in the sunshine. And as my children were play- 
ing in the garden, the nurse has several times 
been startled by the sight of an adder stretching 
out its head from a limb towards the children. A 
lady friend of mine, on taking down a dress from 
her wardrobe, found an adder in the sleeve of it 
as she was putting it on. But she escaped un- 
harmed. 

The most exciting of all sports in Assam, both 
among the natives and Europeans, is the hunting 
of the tiger. The royal Bengal tiger is found in 



116 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

all the jungles, and fearlessly prowls about our 
houses at night seeking its prey. The man-eater 
is never satisfied with anything but human flesh ; 
but the other tigers are content with goats, deer, 
cows and ponies. The native mode of hunting 
the tiger is to surround him in his lair during the 
period of day when he is most droAvsy, and with 
very long-handled spears pierce his body through 
and through from every direction, leaving him no 
possible chance of escape. 

A company of natives came to our bungalow 
on an average of twice a week to secure Mr. 
Marston's assistance in destroying these powerful 
creatures. In a village near us a man-eater de- 
stroyed, in one week, three human beings, and the 
natives were unable to find his hiding-place for 
the daytime. They entreated Mr. Marston to go 
with them and put a ball from his trusty rifle into 
the tiger. This rifle had three separate barrels : 
one was used for small game and carried shot ; the 
second was for medium-sized animals, such as cleer, 
jackals, leopards and wild hogs ; the third carried 
an immense bullet for tigers, buflaloes and croco- 
diles. 

Mr. Marston mounted his elephant and started 
for the village. After a most careful search for 
traces of the tiger's lair they tracked him to a 
sugar-cane patch about a quarter of a mile from 
the village. IMr. Marston ordered the natives to 



SNAKE-CHAJRMERS AND BENGAL TIGERS. 117 

thrust in their long spears from three directions, 
and drive the man-eater from his bed, while he 
would take charge of his exit from the side 
whence no native spears were obstructing the way. 
Mr. Marston remained seated on the elephant ; this 
animal apparently as much interested in the sport 
as was the Salieb himself. Korno Siga and two 
others of our Christian people were also on the 
back of the elephant, and Korno Siga had carried 
a shot-gun, remarking, " it will make a noise at 
any rate." I quote from Mr. Marston's account 
of the shooting : 

" As soon as we arrived at the location of the 
tiger, the natives poked vigorously here and there 
through the sugar-cane stalks, which were thickly 
matted together in places, affording a good lair for 
the ugly beast. At length the monster was dis- 
turbed, and made a tremendous leap towards us 
and our faithful elephant. As soon as his eye 
caught sight of me and my gun, he seemed to 
realize that a desperate struggle must be made for 
his life, and crouching for another leap, which 
would bring him upon the back of our elephant, 
his eyes glared like balls of fire, and his counte- 
nance had an expression of all vindictive and 
demoniacal emotions combined. I knew only too 
well that my life depended upon my rifle, and 
lifting an earnest prayer that the ball might be 
directed by an unerring wisdom, I aimed at tlie 



118 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF, 

frontal bone of the monster's skull. With a 
terrible roar, which quite put at discount Korno 
Siga's report from his shot-gun, the cavernous 
depths of the huge beast seemed quite exhausted, 
and he rolled over on his side and was dead. We 
examined the skull, and found the hole where the 
bullet had penetrated deep into the brain sub- 
stance. He was the largest of royal Bengal tigers, 
a magnificent fellow, measuring eleven feet from 
the nose to the tip of the tail, his body being eight 
feet long. I hired ten natives to carry him to our 
bungalow, that the children and Mildred miglit 
see the fruit of my spoils. They tied his feet to 
long bamboo poles, and ST\Ting him from these 
poles as they bore him on their shoulders. The 
natives came from all the country round about to 
rejoice over the death of the man-eater. His 
skull I am keeping to carry home to my father, 
and his skin makes a royal rug for our drawing- 
room. I am sure the Lord steadied my nerves to 
make that splendid sliot. Henceforth the natives 
will look upon me as a blessing to their country : 
they can appreciate such help as this better than 
tlie good they may get from a sermon. 

" Sj^eaking of sermons, let me tell you a story 
of one of our American missionaries who was in 
great haste to preach a sermon of the typical sort 
to the natives. He did not know the language at 
all accurately, but he had a ravenous zeal to do 



SNAKE-CITARMEES AJVD BENGAL TIGERS. 119 

good. After annouDcing his text, he attempted 
to tell them that he would open up the subject 
before his audience in three parts or headings. 
The word for part or portion in the Assamese 
language is ^Bhag/ and the word for tiger is 
^Bagh.' Our good preacher clearly, and in a 
most preacher-like tone, told the native audience 
that he should let loose or open up before them 
three tigers, and then he went on to enlarge about 
those tigers ; and when he came to the time when 
he wished to dismiss the congregation, he used the 
word ' Khedai,' instead of ^ Bidai,' and so said he 
would drive them all out. One of the natives 
told me that he did not know at all why he should 
come to this country to let loose tigers, and drive 
the people out of church. Zeal is a good thing, 
but zeal and knowledge should always go to- 
gether. 

^^ Korno Siga and I were out upon a jungle tour 
yesterday, and came suddenly upon a solitary wild 
buifalo. He had been driven away from the herd, 
and was fury itself infuriated. As soon as he 
saw us he pawed the ground, and tossed the grass 
and dirt upon his long horns and started for us. 
There was not a tree within sight for us to climb, 
and we saw no means of escape from the dreaded 
animal. It is not a pleasant thought that you may 
be tossed and gored by an animal like the buffalo, 
whose horns each measure five feet in length, and 



120 KOBNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

hence we ran our level best^ and I prayed as I 
ran, and ran fast as I prayed, but knew not where 
I was going, whether into greater danger or to 
a place of safety. The angry beast was so near 
me at times that I fancied I felt liis hot breath on 
my shoulders, and feared that in spite of all my 
praying and running I should fall a victim to 
buffalo fury, when suddenly I came to the bank 
of a small stream. Korno Siga and I both leaped 
at once down the steep bank, and found ourselves 
resting on a projection of rock some five feet 
above the water edge. We crept down and found 
that we were safely covered from the sight of the 
buffalo, whose bellowing and angry pawing we 
could still hear on the banks above us. This was 
indeed finding ^ the shadow of a great rock in a 
weary land.' 

^^A native boat coming along shortly, took 
us on board, and we reached home in safety. 
Travelling by boat in this country is a snail-like 
process. The native rowers are very inert, and 
insist upon taking their own time, never minding 
what may be our haste. A native is never in a 
hurry. As we crawl along the banks of a stream 
skirted by dense overhanging jungle, which teems 
with wild buffaloes, elephants, tigers and the rhi- 
noceros (one horned) — the stream itself abounding 
with hungry crocodiles — compelled as we are to 
sleep in a dug-out moored to such a shore with 



SNAKE-CHAR3IERS AND BENGAL TIGERS. 121 

only the protection of a bamboo mat : our surround- 
ings are not well fitted to induce calmness of mind 
and blissful repose. But we get used to it after 
a while, and after these years of residence in 
Assam, we can say that no real harm has ever 
come to us. To the true sportsman this kind of a 
life is apropos, and I who so intensely enjoyed 
sporting in my youthful days should not complain 
of my many opportunities for exhibiting my skill 
as a marksman. Yet there are times when there 
comes an element of unpleasantness even in hunt- 
ing for the royal Bengal tigers and buffaloes. 

" Yet, as a missionary doing earnest work for 
these, my beloved people, I am always happy, and 
with my priceless rifle and a hatchet at my pillow, 
and the Lord of all the earth ever with me, I feel 
but little fear. And I am truly thankful to be 
doing a work that, but for me, would never be 
done. My life is counting for more here than it 
could possibly count for in my native land. 
Hence, I will gladly spend and be spent for the 
good of others." 



CHAPTER XIY. 

KORNO SIGA BECOMES A CHIEF. 

WHILE Korno Siga and Kaclie were thus use- 
fully laboring among their people, Sar Po, 
the venerable father of Korno Siga and chief of 
his tribe, was attacked with small-pox and died. 
According to the laws of the hill tribes, Korno 
Siga, who previous to this had been a nominal 
chief, became acting chief in his stead, as this foster- 
parent had no children of his own. In vain did 
the missionaries and native Christians urge that 
the old chief, who in his heart was a believer in 
Christianity, should be given Christian burial. 
The heathen were in the majority and their opinion 
prevailed. And Sar Po's corpse was placed on the 
bamboo dicing, and a little roof built over it to 
protect it from the vultures and jackals. Mourners 
were hired to weep and wail, and beat their chests, 
and tear their hair for fifteen days, during which 
time the spirit of the dead man was supposed to 
be seeking an abode. But when the fifteen days 
were over, the people feasted and danced for yet 
fifteen days more, because they believed the spirit 
had found a resting place. At the end of the 
(122) 



KORNO SIGA BECOMES A CHIEF. 123 

thirty days the corpse was covered with pitch and 
straw, and cremated, the ashes being carefully 
gathered up and kept in a memorial urn that 
future generations might look upon them and 
remember the chief, Sar Po. 

Though Korno Siga was now chief, he was none 
the less interested in the Christianization of his 
people, and he was able to wield a wider influence 
for good than before. One day when he had gone 
to look after some of the business interests of his 
tribe with an adjoining tribe, he sat down under a 
hal tree to eat his rice, and a landholder of con- 
siderable note came and talked with him, asking 
him many questions about his tribe, his religion, 
and his business interests. Korno Siga, always on 
the lookout for benefiting the people, took his 
Testament and read from it some of the words of 
Jesus. The man, whose name was Habe, listened 
Avith much interest, and asked for a tract as Korno 
Siga left. The tract was a portion of the gospels 
of the New Testament, and Habe, who had learned 
to read in a Hindoo school, read it closely while 
he kept it concealed for six months. At the end 
of that time he very suddenly put in an appearance 
at our bungalow. He sought Mr. Marston's study 
and told him how Korno Siga had given him the 
sacred book, and how he had studied it for the 
months previous, until he had decided to visit the 
missionary and ask for Christian baptism. 



124 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

The missionary asked him if he realized how 
much he must suffer by way of persecution if he 
became a Christian. " Your tribe have taken the 
Hindoo religion^ and if you become a Christian 
your people Avill cast you out, calling you a 
Christian dog. Your family will forsake you ; 
your property will be confiscated, and you will 
become a homeless wanderer. Can you endure 
all this for the sake of a religion of which you 
only heard six months ago, and which none of 
your tribe have embraced ? '^ 

Habe replied : ^^ I have enjoyed such happiness 
and such liberty of soul during these months 
since I believed in Christ, that I can endure 
all you have mentioned and even more for his 
sake." 

And so he was baj^tized and went back to his 
village. The results were just as the missionary 
had predicted. His brothers took his land from 
him, his wife and children forsook him, and he 
was obliged to build him a little hut and live by 
himself. Often was he spit upon and called a 
Christian dog, by those who had formerly treated 
him with deference. Quietly and conscientiously 
did Habe endeavor to live out the principles which 
Christ inculcated before his people, and whenever 
opportunity offered, he earnestly besought them to 
study Christ^s word and life, and see for themselves 
what this new doctrine could do for them. When 



KOENO SIGA BECOMES A CHIEF. 125 

the time came for the gathering iu of the rice crop 
every available person in the villages was called 
into service. The rainy season was fast coming, 
and the rice must be gathered and stored quickly. 
The villagers did not ask Habe to help them, feel- 
ing that after persecuting him as they had, he 
would never lend them a helping hand. But un- 
solicited, he worked day and night for the saving 
of their crops, though his brothers had defrauded 
him of all his land. When at length it was all 
gathered, the people gathered about Habe's hut, 
and asked him to tell them of his religion. They 
had never before known a man among them to 
work day and night for his enemies and persecu- 
tors, and they had decided that Habe must have 
some spirit moving him, of which they were 
ignorant. Gladly did the good man open to them 
the beautiful life and doctrines of the divine 
Christ, and they heard and believed until one after 
another joined him, and a brotherhood of Christians 
was organized, and finally the whole village where 
Habe lived became Christians. They built a 
church and a school, and Habe became their 
preacher and teacher. His wife and family came 
back to him and embraced his faith, and thus his 
home and all of his surroundings were more com- 
fortable than they had ever been. 

Mr. Marston had supplied Habe with American 
implements of agriculture, so that much larger 



126 KOENO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

crops were now raised^ and the villages about wished 
to learn the secret of Habe's successful farming. 

One of the gong huras (head men) of a Hindoo 
village begged to use one of the American ploAvs, 
that he might turn up the soil deeper than the 
forked stick used by the Hindoos for plows could 
possibly do. A Hindoo priest seeing him plowing 
with the Christian plow, commanded him to " put 
it up at once/^ telling him that he was ^^ plowing up 
the sacred religion of the Hindoos with that 
Christian plow.'' 

Korno Sigo's influence for good among his people 
was felt all through his tribe. One day when Mr. 
Marston and myself were travelling with him 
through the jungle, we came upon an image of a 
Hindoo god, which a priest had left on the hills, 
hoping that the people there would become wor- 
shippers of idols. Korno Siga threw the image 
face downward to the ground, and stamping upon 
it before a large number of his people, said : ^' Let 
no one worship this image until it arises and shows 
its face. This god is more helpless than a babe ; 
who wants to worship such a thing ? Our God is 
eternal and all-powerful, and can save to the 
uttermost." One night during our journeyings 
among the hill people we arrived at a late hour in 
a lieathen village where we supposed the people 
knew nothing of us, nor of the Christian religion. 
Being exceedingly weary we pitched our little tent, 



KOENO SIGA BEC03IES A CHIEF. 127 

and at once retired to rest. We had scarcely fallen 
asleep when we were awakened by the voices of 
singers breaking the stillness of the night air, and 
as we listened we heard the sweet hymns of our 
childhood, sacred to us by association with loved 
parents and relatives in our beloved native land : 
" Jesus, Lover of my soul," " Rock of Ages cleft 
for me,'^ and others equally familiar. Wearied 
and homesick we had laid us down to sleep, and 
now listening to these familiar words we seemed 
once more surrounded by our loved absent ones. 
Mr. Marston went out in search of the singers, 
and found not one familiar face among them. 
" Where did you learn these Christian hymns ? " 
he asked. " Korno Siga and Kache taught them 
to us once when they sojourned a few weeks in our 
village,'' was the reply. These hymns became 
texts for sermons often afterwards among this 
people. 



CHAPTEE XV. 

HASHISH, OPIUM AND CHRISTIAN BRANDY. 

THE Hindoos of Assam are all inveterate 
smokers. Men, women and children all 
smoke tobacco and chew the betel nnt. It is not 
an uncommon thing for a toddling infant to leave 
off nursing and run to its father for a smoke. 

Most of the adults also use opium in some form. 
The hill tribes have never until recent years been 
opium eaters, nor have the Hindoos known of the 
use of brandy as a beverage until Christian coun- 
tries taught them the use of it. Among our peo- 
ple in Assam the common name for all of the in- 
toxicating drinks was Christian brandy. The hill 
tribes make a fermented drink from rice, and are 
in the habit of drinking it daily as the German 
does his lager, but they seldom become intoxicated 
with this drink. The curse of the Hindoo is 
opium, and it is exceedingly difficult to break one 
from this terrible habit. 

Hashish, the Indian hemp, is called Bhang by 
the Assamese. India is the native country of this 
plant, and when it is cultivated in northern lati- 
tudes it does not produce the resinous exudation 
(128) 



HASHISH, OPIUM, CHRISTIAN BRANDY. 129 

that characterizes it in India, which is known by 
the medical term of Cannabis Inclica. The large 
leaves and seed vessels are also used by the com- 
mon people for the manufacture of this drug. Its 
eifect upon different individuals varies widely. 
Some are soothed and made serenely happy ; others 
are moved to immoderate and boisterous mirth ; 
while a third class become wrathful and violent 
and attempt to destroy the lives of others as well 
as of themselves. Bajan, a Nepaulese servant 
whom we had in our employ, was of this latter 
clasSj though a most valuable employe when not 
"Bhanged.^^ When in his frantic state from the 
effects of hashish, he would endeavor to choke 
himself, and everybody else, seeming to have a 
mania for catching at necks, and it would require 
two or three men to control him. The delightful 
hallucinations produced by this drug give reason 
to believe that it is the nepenthe^ or "grief as- 
suager'' of the ancients. One of its names in 
Assam is " causer of the reeling gait," and another 
^' the laughter-mover." 

Our word assassin is derived from this word 
hashish. Hassan ben Sabah founded the eastern 
branch of assassins. His creed was : " Nothing is 
true and everything is lawful." He had a fine, 
well-fortified castle called Alamut, surrounded by 
walled gardens filled with beautiful flower beds, fruit 
trees, rippling streams and luxurious halls. Charm- 
9 



130 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

ing maidens and handsome boys were kept in these 
gardens to entertain visitors. Those whom he 
considered strong and brave enough to be initiated 
into the order of assassins, were invited to the 
banquets of the Grand IMaster Hoben ben Sabah, 
and when well intoxicated with liashish they were 
carried into the beautiful garden and laid upon 
couches that they might sleep off its effects. On 
awakening they thought that they were in para- 
dise, and henceforth became most devoted servants 
of the Grand Master, and willingly undertook all 
the desperate deeds of violence which he exacted 
from them. These desperadoes were then called 
Hashashin, and this word was afterwards corrupted 
by the Crusaders into assassin, and has continued 
to this time to be the English term for a cruel, se- 
cret murderer. This order of Hashashin was found 
only a few years ago to have an existence in India, 
a suit being brought into the English court by a 
Grand Master who thus sought to recover posses- 
sion of the records of his order. 

The Thugs of India were for a long time the 
terror of all travellers. These were a sect of as- 
sassins who were worshippers of the goddess Kali, 
the divinity of sensuality and death. She is rep- 
resented as always thirsting for human blood, and 
the victims — buffaloes and goats — which are con- 
tinually sacrificed to lier in India are legion. 
Formerly many human sacrifices were offered to 



HASHISH, OPIUM, CHRISTIAN BRANDY. 1^1 

this bloody goddess, but the humanity and Chris- 
tian principle of the English government has long 
since forbidden human sacrifices. The Kalika 
Purana, one of the sacred books of the Hindoos, 
gives most minute details about the way the Thugs 
are to conduct their deeds of violence. Each gang 
had a leader, a guru, or teacher, and learners. Among 
the latter were stranglers, entrappers and grave- 
diggers. They assumed the garb of travellers, and 
they used a handkerchief for strangling their vic- 
tims. The plunder of this cruel sect was divided 
into thirds — Kali receiving one-third, the widows 
and orphans of the sect one-third, and the remain- 
ing third to the assassins themselves. We are all 
familiar with the story of the extermination of the 
Thugs by the English government. Between 1826 
and 1835 nearly two thousand persons in India 
were condemned as Thugs, and their families were 
taken under the protection of the government, their 
children being taught trades and educated to a 
moral and useful life. Hashish Avas the drug that 
these Thugs used, to nerve them up to their deeds 
of violence. The burglar of America gets along 
successfully in his vocation of plunder and murder 
without hashish. 

The poppy fields of Bengal are one of the beau- 
tiful sights which meet the traveller on his journey 
through the country. There are two varieties ; 
one with either red or white flowers and black 



132 KOEJVO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

seeds, and the other with pure white flowers and 
white seeds. The white variety has crimson stripes 
and lines upon a pure white ground ; it is very 
beautiful and ornamental, and these peculiar traits 
can be secured bj planting only the best seeds from 
the best flowers. In India the opium poppy is 
sown in winter, and the soil is highly enriched and 
abundantly watered. The word opium is derived 
from the word "opion/' meaning poppy juice. 
In India, incisions with a knife of three or more 
blades are made in the green capsules ; this is done 
during the hottest part of the day, and the next 
morning the white juice which has exuded and 
thickened is scraped off, and put into jars and sent 
to the opium factories, where it is purified and 
sent to the market. 

The English government still monopolizes the 
opium trade in India, for though any one may 
engage in the cultivation of the plant, the opium 
must all be sold at prices fixed by government ; 
and as India furnishes at least 11,000,000 pounds 
annually for the market, the revenue realized by 
the government is enormous. The opium-eaters 
and smokers are numerous in Assam, a large 
majority of the Hindoos using it daily in one form 
or another. To this fact their weak and feeble 
physical condition is largely owing. 

The hoohah or hubble-bubble is the native 
apparatus for smoking. This pipe has a long 



RASHISH, OPIUM, CHRISTIAN BRANDY. 133 

stem which carries the smoke through a cocoanut 
shell filled with water, and as it is being drawn 
through it produces a bubbling sound ; hence the 
name hubble-bubble. 

The wizened appearance of the Assamese is a 
painful sight to the European newly arrived in 
Assam. It is exceedingly difficult to persuade a 
Hindoo to give up either his betel nut, his tobacco, 
or his opium, although he knows that the opium 
at any rate is fast destroying his noblest powers, 
and rendering him a poor sleeping imbecile. Espe- 
cially is this true of the older people. And yet 
the most heroic efforts are made by those who are 
converted to Christianity to leave off the habit. 
Some of them even begged that they might be 
kept in close confinement and suffered to die, 
rather than be allowed to partake of the accursed 
drug, which they knew not only ruined their own 
moral and mental capacities, but also disgraced the 
pure religion which they had espoused. The 
young people of Assam are not using it as much 
as formerly, and our hill people as a rule do not 
use it. One evening during a religious service I 
observed Korno Siga dozing in such a manner 
that I felt quite sure he had been taking opium. 
I sent for him the next day, and put the question 
directly to him : " Have you contracted that 
dreadful habit of smoking opium?'' He burst 
into tears and confessed that he had been using it 



134 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

for six months, and, furthermore, that he had also 
been partaking of Christian brandy. 

I was astonished that one who had seemed 
morally and religiously so strong should have 
taken on these dreadful habits, and I entreated 
him as he loved his own soul and cared for the 
good of his people, that he would at once resolve 
to " taste not, touch not, handle not," either of 
these poisons. 

At our next meeting of the church-members he 
made a most penitent confession, and asked that 
his name be taken from the list of membership, 
for, said he, " It is not just to the good fruit that 
the decayed and imperfect should remain in the 
basket,'' and ringing his hands and smiting upon 
his breast, he exclaimed, " Oh, how weak I am ! 
just like a little cliild who is constantly falling 
down, and needs some one to help it on its feet. 
Can I ever be strong and true like the Marston 
Saheb?" 

Mr. Marston refused to have his name stricken 
from the church list, for, said he, " if Korno Siga 
is weak he all the more needs the help of the 
church, and that is what the church is for — to 
raise the fallen and to strengthen the weak and 
instruct the ignorant." It was a long time before 
Korno Siga would trust himself to go into the 
bazaars or other places where opium was being 



HASHISH, OPIUM, CHRISTIAN BRANDY. 135 

smoked or whiskey being sokl, and he did break 
himself of these habits. 

In order truly to benefit any people we must 
bear with them in their infirmities, and never 
despair of them even though they sin against them- 
selves seventy times seven. What a lesson of in- 
finite patience has Christ taught us in his dealings 
with poor weak humanity ! ^' In all their afflic- 
tions he was afflicted/' etc., "and he bore them all 
the days of old.'' These Assamese converts do 
really learn to make sacrifices for the good of others. 
They who know not what real self-denial is may 
learn a lesson from the following incident, which 
occurred during the days of famine in Assam. 
The little body of Christians who had been sorely 
pressed for food, being obliged to gather the grass 
seeds and subsist upon them, as there was no rice, 
had kept up their weekly offerings for carrying the 
word to the reo^ions bevond durina: the absence of 
the missionary from the station. And when the 
famine abated they brought their money, and put- 
ting it into the treasury were about to depart, when 
they were asked why they had not taken that 
money and sending to Calcutta bought rice for 
their hungry families. The reply was, " Teacher, 
do you think we could eat the Lord's money ? '^ 



CHAPTER Xyi. 

KOENO SIGA AND THE THIBETAN BUDDHIST. 

OUR liero's faith in Christianity was assailed 
most vigorously by a Buddhist from Thibet, 
who had come to Assam to sell woollen cloths, 
shawls and blankets. For the first time, Korno 
Siga had come in contact with an educated Buddh- 
ist, and he found himself quite unable to answer 
the arguments brought forward to prove that 
Christianity was only a kind of second edition of 
Buddhism. He therefore invited the Buddhist to 
accompany him to Mr. Marston's study, and as he 
introduced him to Mr. Marston, he franklv 
admitted that the arguments brought forward by 
the Thibetan were beyond his ability to answer. 

Buddhist, "Our Buddha, Sakya Muni, was 
born at least four centuries before Christ ; he came 
from heaven ; was born of a virgin ; was Avelcomed 
by angels; received by an aged saint, who was 
endowed with prophetic vision ; was persecuted in 
the temple ; baptized with water, and afterwards 
baptized with fire. He astonished the most 
learned doctors by his understanding and his 
answers. He was led by the spirit into the wilder- 
(136) 



KORNO SIGA AND THE BUDDHIST. 137 

ness, and having there been tempted by the devil 
and resisted him, he went about preaching and 
doing wonderful works. He was the friend of 
publicans and sinners; was transfigured on a 
mount; descends to hell and ascends to heaven. 
With the exception of Christ's crucifixion, almost 
every incident in the life of your Christ is found 
narrated in the Buddhistic traditions of the life 
of Sakya Muni Gautama Buddha." 

M7\ Marston. "My Buddhist brother, do I 
understand you to assert that our Christian Scrip- 
tures, which we call the New Testament, owe their 
origin to the legend of Buddha ? '' 

Buddhist. " Yes, that is my assertion, Saheb." 
Mr. Marston. "You think that our New 
Testament writers had in some way become 
familiar with the Buddhistic legend, but I think 
I can show you that this could not have been the 
case. There is no historical record, nor can it be 
proved that Buddhistic doctrines were at all circu- 
lated in Palestine previous to the writing of the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ. Buddhism, so far as we 
can learn, was still confined to India, until the 
reign of Asoka, b. c. 250. It was during the 
first century of the Christian era that Buddhism 
reached China. None of the Buddhist authorities 
make any claim that their missionaries undertook 
to convert the people on the shores of the Medi- 
terranean. (Dr. EiteFs three lectures on Buddh- 



138 KORNO 8IGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

ism.) Moreover, I think you will find that the 
alleged similarity between your original Buddhis- 
tic legend and our Scriptures does not really 
exist." 

Buddhist. " But, Saheb, I have here one of 
our own legends ; read for yourself." 

Mr. Marston. " That is one of the more 
modern legends written after our New Testament 
was written. I have the most ancient history of 
Buddha extant, and with your permission I will 
read to you the sketch of this wonderful man's 
life. ^ Sakya Muni was born in an Aryan village, 
about one hundred miles north of Benares. His 
father, Eaja Suddhodana, was king of the Sakyas. 
His mother's name was Maya, and she was forty- 
five years old when Buddha was born. She 
died when Buddha was seven days old, and his 
aunt Prajapatni became his foster-mother. Con- 
cerning his childhood and youth the Buddhistic 
history is silent. When twenty-nine years of age 
he married his cousin Yasodhara, by whom he had 
one son, Bahula. At this time, being weighed 
down by a sense of human misery everywhere 
visible about him, he determined to renounce 
home, wife, child, kingdom and all, and give him- 
self to the work of understanding the mystery of 
sorrow, and removing it if possible. This step is, 
by the Buddhist authorities, called the " Great Re- 
nunciation." He went from one to another of the 



KORNO SIGA AND THE BUDDHIST. 139 

Brahmin teachers seeking to learn the way to the 
cessation of pain, but failing to get relief he gave 
up all teachers, and took up a life of penance and 
self-mortification. Then comes that final struggle 
of Gautama with the spirit of evil, when he dis- 
covers the "Four Noble Truths," viz. : 1, The 
Fact of Sorrow ; 2, The Cause of Sorrow ; 3, 
The Destruction of Sorrow ; and 4, The Way, 
the eightfold path that leads to the quieting of 
pain. From this time Buddha began with mis- 
sionary zeal to preach the way to others. But the 
way which he prescribed was not popular with the 
people, as it involved the adoption of celibacy and 
the leading of a mendicant life, and thus broke up 
families, and if reduced to practice would put an 
end to society. The end of all this was Nirvaua, 
the end of pain, the absence of all desire. 
Buddha died at tlie age of eighty, and one of the 
records says that his death was caused by eating 
unsuitable food. Many of the humane and pliilan- 
thropic measures which are attributed to Buddha 
were really instituted by Asoka, who lived 
between two and three centuries later.' " 

Buddhist. " But, Saheb, you have not yet an- 
swered my argument respecting the likeness be- 
tween Buddhism and Christianity : how do you 
account for it ? " 

Mr. Ifarston. " I think it can be positively 
shown that the things in Buddhism which Chris- 



140 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

tianity, according to your idea, has borrowed, were 
on the contrary borrowed from Christianity by the 
latter Buddhistic legends. For instance, the idea 
of an infinite, self-existent, omniscient Buddha 
does not appear in any of the old Buddhistic 
authorities, but was invented several centmies 
after the birth of Christ, and in its present full 
form did not appear until the tenth century of our 
era, fifteen hundred years after the days of 
Buddha. Thus do we find by most careful in- 
quiry and research, that the original Manual of 
Buddha does not so much as teach the existence of 
a God. On the contrary, it says, ^ All being 
exists from some cause ; but that cause is undis- 
coverable.' Buddhism then is agnosticism, and 
agnosticism is virtually atheism. The differences 
between Christianity and Buddhism are wide and 
radical ; Christ was born in poverty ; the 
Buddha in the palace of a king. Christ was 
born of a virgin ; Buddha was the son of the 
Rajah and Rani of the Sakyas. Christ was never 
in need of salvation himself, but proclaimed him- 
self the very God. The Buddha is represented as 
in sore need of salvation, and ignorant how to 
obtain it, until by long penance and self-sacri- 
fice he found the way to Nirvana, Avhich we can 
hardly call salvation, since Buddha says, ' If 
thou keepest thyself silent as a broken gong, thou 
hast attained to Nirvana.' The Buddha died at 



KORNO SIGA AND THE BUDDHIST. 141 

a ripe old age; the Christ in his early manhood 
gives himself to crucifixion that he may save the 
world. Of what avail are a few seeming agree- 
ments between religions which present such wide 
and radical contrasts ? Let me urge upon you, my 
Thibetan brother, the further investigation of this 
most interesting of subjects, and come again and 
let us talk it over.'^ 

From this conversation Korno Siga saw how 
•necessary it was that he should thoroughly study 
the religions of the world, if he would be able to 
defend his Christian faith successfully with those 
who sincerely differed from him. 

All that could be found relative to the religion 
of Buddha he now gathered together, and com- 
menced a most careful investigation as to its claims 
upon the world as a religion sent from God. In 
this search he most cordially invited the Thi- 
betan Buddhist to join him, and they took for their 
first investigation the ten commandments as given 
by Buddha, viz. : 1. Not to deprive any living 
thing of life. 2. Not to lie. 3. Not to steal. 4. 
Not to commit adultery. 5. Not to drink what 
can intoxicate. 6. Not to eat at prohibited sea- 
sons. 7. Not to wear wreaths ; or use dentifrices 
or perfumes. 8. Not to sleep on a high or broad 
bed. 9. To abstain from dancing, music, and 
stage plays. 10. To abstain from the use of gold 
or silver. 



142 KOFKO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

"As to the first commandment," said the Buddh- 
ist, "the Sakya Muni tells us that ^ye break it 
whenever we kill a louse, bug or tick/' 

" But/' said Korno Siga, " you are breaking that 
law every time you eat a mango." 

" Not so," replied the Buddhist, " for I always 
eat them in the dark so that I cannot see the 
worms." 

" You ^vell know they are there, however, and 
you are not a good Buddhist if you thus evade the 
teachings of your law. Moreover you are de- 
stroying life in immense quantities in every drink 
of water you take, for the missionaries have often 
shown me myriads of little creatures, called in- 
fusoria, in a drop of the river water placed upon 
the object-holder of a microscope. And they say 
the little animals are always present in ponds, lakes 
and rivers." 

" But I carry always with me a lota of water 
from the sacred Brahmapootra, and surely the Hin- 
doo gods keep that free from animal life." 

Korno Siga put a drop of the water from the 
lota under the microscope which stood on the table 
in the Saheb's study where they were seated, and 
when the Buddhist saw that it literally swarmed 
with life, he smote his breast and exclaimed, " Hai, 
hai, moi pani arn pibo nuarun — Alas, alas, I can 
never more drink water. Who knows how many 
of my ancestors I may already have swallowed ? " 



KORXO SIGA AND THE BUDDHIST. 143 

The doctrine of transmigration of souls is a 
source of endless worry and concern to Buddhi.st 
and Brahmin alike. They fear to kill a snake or a 
flea, lest their great-grandfather's soul may have 
taken up its abode in these forms. 

HoAV wonderfully different all this, from the 
liberty of the Christian doctrine and the hope of 
immortality beyond the grave ! 

That there are many beautiful moral precepts 
found in both Buddhist and Brahmin Shasters, no 
one acquainted with these books will for one 
moment deny. Indeed is there not something 
good in every religion and among every people ? 
But when one has lived among a people until he 
has learned to think in their language, and when 
he has learned to reason from the Buddhist's and 
Brahmin's standpoint, and sees things as they really 
understand them, and not as a beautiful poem like 
^' The Light of Asia " represents them, then indeed, 
and then only can these ancient religions be justly 
comprehended. The desire to exalt Buddhism 
above Christianity seems to me to arise from a de- 
sire to escape the heart-searching command of 
Christ : If any man will do the will he shall know 
of the doctrine. Did the Thibetan Buddhist be- 
come a Christian after the long talks with the 
missionary and Korno Siga? Oh, no, he went 
back to his praying wheels which he considered 
more efficacious than vocal prayer, and to the 



144 KORNO SIGA, THE MOIWTAIN CHIEF. 

lamas^ hojDing that he might sell enough -woollen 
cloths and blankets before his death, so that he 
might have riches sufficient to hire tlie lamas when 
he was about to die to pull the skin from his skull, 
and make a hole large enough to let out the soul, 
that he may next become a toad, a snake, or a flea, 
and thus go on in the transmigrations. Buddha is 
derived from the Sanscrit word ^^to know/' "to 
have wisdom/' "to understand.'' The Thibetan 
Buddhists differ in many respects from those of 
Burmah, Ceylon and China. In the cold high 
regions of Thibet, one Buddhist woman may have 
ten husbands. The praying machine is a little 
wooden drum covered with leather, and decorated 
with texts and charms. These are found every- 
where among the Thibetan Buddhists ; often they 
are fitted into niches in the walls, and generally 
arranged in rows of eight or ten. The worshipper 
has simply to turn the machine with his hand, as 
inside of it are many prayers written on little 
scrolls, and each revolution of the wheel counts to 
the religious credit as many hundred prayers. Some 
of these praying wheels are small enough to be 
carried in the hand, while others are of colossal 
size, and require wind and water to move them. 
I have somewhere read of one plate in a praying 
wheel which contained several thousand open 
dots ; and each dot to be filled, when the name of 
Buddha had been repeated a hundred or a thousand 



KORNO SIGA AND THE BUDDHIST. 145 

times^ with paper, which when burned is supposed 
to pass into the other world {i. e., his next trans- 
migration) to the credit of the devotee. The 
Brahmins often name their children after the Hin- 
doo gods, and each time they call the child by 
name they believe that they are credited with a 
prayer to that god. The kindness to animals, which 
is quite characteristic of Brahmins and Buddhists, 
is largely due to the belief that their friends at 
death pass into animal forms, and in hurting or 
killing one of these animals they might be de- 
stroying the habitations of grandfathers and 
uncles. A company of these people when about to 
seat themselves on their mats, will brush away 
carefully every vestige of dust from them, lest 
perchance they might sit upon ants and destroy 
their aunts. 

In pure Buddhism, no god is mentioned, and 
this religion has never yet advanced a nation 
higher than China or Siam. One has very aptly 
said of it : " The highest conception of Buddhism 
is to be unselfish for the selfish end of attaining a 
solitary Nirvana in which one shall desire neither 
existence nor non-existence.^' And yet who shall 
say that this religion has not, like all those pre- 
ceding Christ's advent to the earth, been a looking 
forward to, and in some measure a preparation for, 
the highest and best in the revelation of the im- 



10 



146 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF, 

maculate and divine Son of God, the world's 
Redeemer ? 

Prof. Max MuUer, in his ^' Science of Religion/' 
says : " We have ignored or wilfully narrowed 
the sundry times and divers manners in which God 
spoke in times past unto our fathers, the prophets. 
If we believe there is a God, and that he created 
heaven and earth, and that he ruleth the world by 
his overseeing providence, we cannot believe that 
millions of human beings, all created like ourselves 
in the image of God, were in their time of ignor- 
ance abandoned by God ; so that their religion was 
a farce and their whole life a mockery. An 
honest and impartial study of the religions of the 
world will teach us that it was not so ; that there 
is no religion which does not contain some grains 
of truth. It will teach us to see in the study of 
the ancient religions more clearly than anyw^here 
else, the divine education of the human race.'' 

This all being pre-eminently true, are we not, 
nevertheless, in danger of overestimating Buddli- 
ism in this our day ? Let me quote here a note 
of warning from Robert Burdette : ^^ Who is 
Buddha ? Did you ever notice, my son, that the 
man who tells you he cannot believe in the Bible is 
usually able to believe in almost anything else ? 
You will find men who will turn with horror and 
utter disbelief of the Bible, and joyfully embrace 
the teachings of Buddha. It is quite t\\Q thing 



KORNO SIGA AND THE BUDDHIST. 147 

just now for a civilized, enlightened man, brought 
up in a Christian country and an age of wisdom, 
to be a Buddhist. And if you ask six men who pro- 
fess Buddhism, who Buddha was, one of them will 
tell you he was an Egyptian soothsayer who lived 
two hundred years before Moses. Another Avill tell 
you that he brought letters from Phoenicia and 
introduced them into Greece ; a third will tell you 
that she was a beautiful woman of Farther India, 
bound by her vows to perpetual chastity ; a fourth 
will, with a little hesitation, say he was a Brahmin 
of the ninth degree, a holy disciple of Confucius ; 
and of the other two, one will frankly admit that 
he does not know, and the other will say, with 
some indecision, that he was either a Dervish of the 
Nile (whatever that is), or a Felo de se, he can^t be 
positive which. Before you propose to know 
more than anybody and everybody else, my son, 
be very certain that you are abreast of at least 
two-thirds of your fellow-men. I don't want to 
suppress any inclination you may have towards 
genuine free thought and careful honest investigation. 
I only want you to avoid the great fault of atheism 
in this day and generation. I don't want you to 
try and build a six-story house on a one-story 
foundation. Before you criticise, condemn and 
finally revise the work of creation, be pretty con- 
fident that you know something about it as it is, 
and don't, let me implore you, don't turn this 



148 KORNO BIG A, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF, 

world upside down and sit on it and flatten it 
entirely out, until you have made or secured an- 
other one for the rest of us to live in while you 
demolish the old one/^ 



CHAPTER Xyil. 

TEA CULTIVATION, AND OTHER INDUSTRIES OF 

ASSAM. 

SCATTERED throughout the province of Assam 
are many tea gardens, superintended ahnost en- 
tirely by Europeans from England and Scotland. 
But few Yankees have as yet entered that line of 
work. The plant is indigenous to the country, 
and before the advent of Europeans the natives 
were in the habit of frying the green leaves in 
mustard oil and eating them as greens. The great 
" boom ^' in tea cultivation took place while I was 
living in Assam, and though there followed a re- 
action from that unhealthy period of tea excite- 
ment, the enterprise has been a success, and the 
tea annually sent home from Assam by the planters 
is an excellent article, very favorably known in 
commerce and bringing a good price. One of the 
great difficulties which the tea planter has to con- 
tend with is the necessity of importing coolies 
from Calcutta to work the tea gardens. This is 
very expensive, and the coolies are often dissatis- 
fied and sickly, and give the poor planter any 
amount of duhh, trouble. It seems to us that the 

(149) 



ISO KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

English government has not been in sympathy 
with the tea planters, as would be naturally sup- 
posed it would. On the contrary, the sums re- 
quired for the lease of lands, which one would 
think the government would only be too glad to 
have cultivated without receiving tax money, are 
enormously high and exacting, and we wonder 
that the planters are able to realize any gain after 
their heavy expenses. 

The planters are in many ways a blessing to 
Assam as well as to the tea-drinking world. Their 
hardships and privations are many, and being 
obliged to live on their gardens they have but 
little European society, and live very lonely lives. 
In the early days of the tea cultivation a planter 
might sicken and die without an European know- 
ing of his fate. One planter, but twenty miles 
from us, was attacked with cholera, died and re- 
mained in his bed two weeks before his European 
friends knew aught of it. I verily believe that 
the missionaries have a much easier life in every 
way than the tea planters of Assam. And the 
planters have it in their power to do real mission- 
ary work among their employes, if they are so 
inclined ; and they do occasionally show themselves 
both philanthropic and truly Christian in their 
eiforts to benefit the miserable coolies who work 
for them. The planters have been much censured 
for not observing the Sabbath on their gardens 



TEA CULTIVATION AND OTHER INDUSTRIES. 151 

more generally. Their plea is that they must 
lose two days' work if they keep the Sabbath, as 
the leaves picked on Saturday cannot wait until 
Monday to be dried. Still when there comes to 
be an earnest desire to observe the Sabbath, there 
will be some way found out of this difficulty. It 
is no small matter to clear the land of forest trees, 
thoroughly break up the soil, and get ready for the 
tea planting. The money required is considerable, 
and the work quite similar to clearing a farm in 
New England. 

After the young plants are set out, the w^eds 
must be carefully cleared away, the soil frequently 
stirred to allow^ the plants to get all possible 
nourishment from mother earth, and even then it 
takes three years to get a plantation in condition 
to produce tea. The tea plant, if left to grow 
without pruning, will become a tall tree, but the 
planters find that the yield of leaves is better 
when they are kept to about five feet in height. 
The plant is much like the English myrtle bush, 
and has white blossoms w^hich resemble small 
dog-roses. Teas are black or green, according to 
the age of the leaf and the manner in which it is 
manipulated. If a plant is sickly, the leaves are 
not picked from it. Indeed, all the leaves are not 
taken at one time from a plant. It is customary 
to make nursery beds every year so that there 
may be a constant succession of new plants. The 



152 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

slopes of the hills are the sites usually chosen for 
the gardens iu Assam. The soil here is free from 
stagnant moisture. Most beautiful to my eyes 
were these gardens in appearance as I travelled 
through the hills. I have spent hours in their 
study and admiration, and often thought that I 
would like to be engaged in this work, and make 
my plantation a wholesale missionary centre, 
having a school, a church and a hospital conducted 
on a thrifty Yankee plan. The finest teas are 
made from the half-open buds, which are always 
the first gathering, the younger the leaves the 
more delicate their flavor. The finest teas of 
Assam are but rarely seen in America. The 
maximum yield of the plants is in their eighth or 
tenth year. There are five or six gatherings in the 
course of a year, and each time the leaves are 
coarser than the preceding gathering. The 
gathering can only be done in clear weather, and 
the best teas are from leaves gathered in the after- 
noon, when they are thoroughly dry and warm. 
The hill tribe women are the best pickers in 
Assam, and if I remember correctly, gather on an 
average forty pounds a day. It takes four pounds 
of leaves to make one of tea, and I believe the 
usual estimate is that ten thousand pounds of tea 
can annually be marketed from one hundred 
thousand plants. Green tea is made from leaves 
which have been roasted immediately after they 



TEA CULTIVATION AND OTHER INDUSTRIES. 153 

are gathered, and are then rolled and dried. 
Black teas are from leaves which have been ex- 
posed to sun and air for half a day or more for 
drying, and, if the weather is damp, artificial heat 
is used. The roasting is done over a sort of stove 
which is heated by charcoal, and a man manipu- 
lates ihQ leaves constantly, so that none may stick 
to the pan and burn. The rolling has formerly 
been done by the hands (or feet) of the natives, 
placing as much tea as the hands will cover on a 
mat. The motion is such that it gives each leaf a 
twist on itself as one rolls them from right to left. 
Then there is a second roasting and a second roll- 
ing. Shallow pans are used for roasting black 
tea, but the green tea requires deep pans. The 
teas are put into a long basket after the final 
roasting, and submitted to the heat over a charcoal 
fire for several minutes, when they are poured out 
and receive another rolling. Then the leaves are 
sifted, and winnowed, and fried once more to re- 
move every vestige of moisture, and finally packed 
in chests and sent away to the market. 

The native industries are confined almost alto- 
gether to the cultivation of rice, tobacco, sugar- 
cane, and mustard oil. Something has been done 
by them also in the way of gathering the caout- 
chouc which exudes from the rubber trees, and 
sending it to Calcutta to market. Our hill people 
did considerable of that work and realized fine 



154 KOBNO SIGA, TEE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

remuneration. The caoutchouc as it first exudes 
from the incisions made in the trees, is of a white 
color, and as they wind it into balls it takes on a 
brownish red appearance as it is exposed to the 
air. 

The silk-worm thrives in Assam, and all of the 
better clothes of the Assamese of the plains are 
made by the women, who cultivate the plants on 
which to feed the silk-worms, and also spin and 
weave the thread into clothes for their families. 

Cotton clothing is their more common apparel. 
Their embroidered borders and fringes are quite 
beautiful, and a native high-caste woman in full 
dress presents a very graceful and pretty sight. 

The implements for cultivating are of a rude 
kind, and the priests forbid them to adopt modern 
improved machinery of all kinds. The plows 
merely scratch the surface of the soil. The relig- 
ious prejudices of the people forbid them to use 
the manure of cows for enriching the soil ; the cow 
being a sacred animal, the manure is largely de- 
voted to religious purposes, the Fakirs (religious 
mendicants) covering their heads and bodies with 
it, to render themselves acceptable to the gods. A 
well-regulated Assamese hut must be lipped, plas- 
tered over, with the cows' manure every morning, 
in order to keep it pure and acceptable to the Hin- 
doo deities. 

Rice is the staple grain, and two crops are 



TEA CULTIVATION AND OTHER INDUSTRIES. 155 

raised annually, viz. : the dry and the wet season 
crop. Millet, peas and many varieties of pulse 
and grain are also raised. The manner of express- 
ing the oil from the mustard seed is primitive 
among the villagers. I have seen a whole family 
make weights of themselves for six or seven con- 
secutive days, as they have the mustard seeds under 
a huge log, and they all seat themselves upon it. 
The much enjoyed hookah keeps up its hubble- 
bubble constantly, as it is passed from one member 
to another of this happy family. 

I have ventured at times to suggest that a 
weight of less importance than human flesh might 
be employed. But my suggestion has usually been 
answered by the head of the family, " Etu dostur 
amar," " This is our custom,'^ which is with him 
considered an unanswerable argument. How 
different this from American ways ! 

You ask if it would pay a young man to go 
from America to engage in business in Assam. 
Yes, if he can get a position as superintendent of 
a tea garden, or take charge of an ice manufacturino: 
establishment, or if he has a little capital ahead so 
that he could engage in the lumber or coal business. 
There are vast resources of this kind awaiting 
Yankee energy and perseverance ; but it does not 
answer for us to depend upon the natives to any 
extent in earning one's livelihood. The time will 
come, however, is indeed near at hand, when the 



156 KORNO 8IGA, THE 310UNTAIN CHIEF, 

English government will open up all the province 
of Assam to railroad and telegraphic commnnica- 
tion, and this will work wonders in the develop- 
ment of all kinds of business advantages. 

At present the only means of reaching the 
mineral products of the hills, the coal, iron, gold- 
dust, and petroleum, is by long and dangerous 
journeys through dense jungles infested with 
beasts of prey and reeking with malaria. The 
steamers which ply the large rivers do not ap- 
proach near enough to many of these storehouses 
of nature, for men to avail themselves of this 
means of transport. But the day of railroads 
draws on apace, and we will await with patience its 
advent. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

A DAY OF DARKNESS. 

I CANNOT re-write the details of this darkest 
of all days, and hence copy from letters 
written during that period to my home circle in 
America. 

" For five days I have tried in vain to tell you 
the sad, sad news of my bereavement. It came 
upon me so suddenly and I was so weak that I 
could only lie still and cry to God. I seemed all 
alone and in the dark, till the loving Saviour came 
and spake such sweet comforting words, that I 
opened my eyes and found that there was yet light 
for me in heaven, even though my earthly light 
had gone out. And since that hour I have grad- 
ually come back again to life. Henry has gone 
to meet the Saviour he loved and served so faith- 
fully here. On Tuesday morning he was awakened 
from a quiet rest and sleep, with symptoms of 
cholera, which disease has raged fearfully in our 
district during the past month. Our little Henry 
being only three weeks old, I was not allowed to 
know that my dear husband was ill until about an 
hour after he was attacked. Remedies for cholera 

(157) 



158 KOENO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

were given at once and tlie symptoms abated for a 
while^ but only to set in with renewed violence, 
when cholera in its worst form was unmistakably 
claiming him for its victim. The English doctor, 
his wife, and our deputy commissioner all came 
and most kindly assisted in every way possible, 
and in a few hours the dreadful pains and cramps 
had ceased and he lay quietly resting, only being 
disturbed that we might administer stimulants and 
nourishment. 

'^ He seemed so free from pain, that I said to 
him : ^ I will go and look after our babe, for he is 
very hungry.^ He drew me doAvn and kissed me, 
and held my hand for some time. 

" I asked : ^ Have you any pain ? ' 

" ^ None at all,' was the reply. 

^' ^Are you at peace in your mind ? ' 

"He looked up, and with a beaming face re- 
plied, ' Perfect peace.' 

" I had left him but a moment when the deputy 
commissioner came to me to say that he wished I 
would come and give Henry his medicine, as he 
would not take it from his hand. I went at once, 
and as soon as I looked into my dear husband's 
face, I knew that the arrow of death liad pierced 
his heart, and that the kind-hearted commissioner 
had not the courage to tell me all the truth. Henry 
did not recognize me, and in less than five minutes 
he had breathed his last. He sank away as calmly 



A DAY OF DARKNESS. 159 

and as sweetly as a little child goes to sleep in its 
mother's arms. He leaned his head on Jesus* 
breast, and breathed his life out sweetly there. 

" Soon after he was attacked in the morning he 
had noticed my anxious look, and said, ^ Don't 
feel anxious, my dear ; I have committed you and 
our sweet babes to God. He will take better care 
of you than I can.' 

" Henry lias not been well for several weeks. 
His anxiety for me, his constant ministrations night 
and day to the poor natives, the dead and the dying 
demanding his care, and the whole burden of church, 
school, and family being upon him, were too much 
for him. He has seemed very near to the heavenly 
world for many months. His talk of heaven and 
his ardent longing to be absent from the body and 
present with his Lord, has told me only too plainly 
that my angel guide was not long to be with me. 
Oh, that I may be as ripe for the heavenly garners 
as he ! 

" I beseech you to break the sad tidings gently 
to his aged father. Tell him that the angel of 
death came to me on Tuesday morning, and asked 
me for his only son, and that I fell before him and 
besought him if one must go that I might be that 
one, and that Henry, so capable, so noble and so use- 
ful, might be spared. But the messenger of death 
sadly shook his head. And then one after another 
I offered him my precious children. ^ No,' he 



160 KORNO SIGA, THE 310 UN TAIN CHIEF, 

said, * the Master calls for this cliosen one ; lie is 
ripe for heaven.' He died at four in the afternoon 
and was buried at the same hour the day following ; 
the beautiful burial-service of the English church 
being read by our commissioner. 

"And so I am alone in a heathen land, with 
three little ones clinging helplessly to me. Alone, 
and yet not alone, for the Saviour is with me by 
day and night and has taken from me the bitter- 
ness of death. He will be a father to my children 
and will be the widow's God. I have written to 
two of my missionary associates, a hundred miles 
distant from me, asking them to come to our 
station, should the plague take me away, and care 
for the children until they go to America. Were 
it not for these little ones, I should only be too 
glad to go and join my beloved on the other side 
of the river. But for their sakes, I am willing to 
live and wait patiently the time when God shall 
pronounce my life-work done and gather us an 
unbroken family in heaven. 

" It will be a source of comfort to all at home, 
to know that all that human love could do was 
done for Henry. You know how every one loved 
him who knew him, and that was quite as true of 
him here as at home. The beautiful flowers of 
Assam of which he was so fond were all about the 
precious corpse and little Ruth says : ' Papa is 
sleeping in a nice box.* 



A BAY OF DARKNESS. 161 

'^Paul has grieved himself ill for his father. 
After trying in vain to comfort him I said : ^ Paul, 
you know your father has gone to a brighter 
and ha2)]3ier place to live, and we must not grieve 
for him, but live so that we may go to live with 
him/ 

" He replied : ' Mamma, that is just what I feel 
so sad about. I am afraid papa has not gone to 
the happy land.' 

" ^Why, Paul, how can you have such a fear?^ 

" ^ Well, papa told me himself that when good 
people die the thinking part goes to heaven and 
that which cannot think is buried in the ground. 
And I looked so closely when they fastened the 
lid of the casket, and his forehead — papa said that 
was the thinking part — was still there, and oh, 
they have buried dear papa's soul.' 

" I tried to explain to him that the soul was in- 
visible, and only lived in the body just as Ave lived 
in our house, but did not form a part of the house, 
and the dear little thoughtful boy seemed comforted 
and has since been quite cheerful. 

" Our little band of native Christians are incon- 
solable and the young men of the Normal School 
mourn as for an own parent. The native mer- 
chants and the people from all the villages far and 
near have come to express their sympathy and to 
mourn with me, saying, ^This man was one of the 
best friends our country ever had.' All have 
11 



162 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

rallied about me and endeavored to comfort me, 
but how can I be comforted when my dearest 
earthly friend no more walks with me the path of 
life? 

" I was deeply touched the night after Henry's 
burial, to see fifteen of our native Christian women 
come with their mats and their babies and take 
their places for the night on my verandah, that I 
might not feel lonely through the long, sleepless 
hours until the daybreak. 

" God has given to Henry some precious fruit 
in this far-off vineyard, and were it not that my 
first duty is to my fatherless children, I should 
have no greater joy than to remain here and carry 
on his work for these people. 

" They have laid him to rest in the unconse- 
crated part of the cemetery of the Episcopal church ; 
not being a member of the Church of England it 
was not thought proper that he, a dissenter, should 
lie in the consecrated ground. There is a line of 
earth cast up between that which the bishop has 
consecrated and the other portion. When I ven- 
tured to express my regrets to our good deputy 
commissioner that Henry should lie in unconse- 
crated ground Avhile the many godless English 
officers were in the more favored portion, he kindly 
remarked that ^all the consecration those poor 
fellows ever had was in their present surroundings, 



A DAY OF DARKNESS. 163 

and that Mr. Marston did not need consecrated 
ground for he was consecration itself ! ' " 

That you may know in what esteem my dear 
husband was held, I copy here a few of the many 
testimonials which came to me during those dark 
days. The dear old Secretary of our Missionary 
Society, Avho once told me to await the openings 
of Providence and who has long ago gone home to 
heaven, wrote thus : 

" The announcement of the death of Mr. Mars- 
ton is exceedingly painful to us all. We prized 
him highly for his personal qualities and for his 
work wrought for the hill tribes of Assam. A 
manly man was he and a fully developed Christian. 
In missionary character he stood pre-eminent ; few 
equalled and none, so far as my range of vision 
extends, surpassed him. He had breadth, tact, 
facility of movement, persistence and genuine 
force. I think he possessed an uncommon power 
to lay hold of men and mould their character. 
His crowning excellence was his Christian spirit, 
running through all, giving tone to all and never 
forsaking him. His devotion was whole hearted, 
exclusive, a fire that burned to the last moment of 
his life. His letters had an originality and fresh- 
ness that always charmed me. He could not write 
a common-place. Such an eyesight and heart-sight 
of religion ; such a profound view of sin and salva- 
tion ; such a knowledge of his own heart, its needs 



164 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

and its supplies ; so clear and compreliensive ideas 
of the work before him, and such a grasp on the 
resources in the gosj)el ; all these came to me as a 
refreshing solace." 

MEMOEIAL. 

" -With morning's earliest beam, 

In a far Orient land, 
A dream, or more than dream. 

Fell on a sleeping band. 
'Twas shadow, yet 'twas light, 

Like morn's mysterious strife ; 
'Twas day, and yet 'twas night, 

'Twas death, and yet 'twas life. 

" A man of God, and she 

Who wrought life's psalm with him, 
And tender oflfspring three — 

Five bars for their sweet hymn ! 
For days among life's strings 

An unseen hand had felt. 
And there were sounds of wings, 

Whene'er in prayer he knelt. 

"His last words, 'perfect peace,' 

Those heavenly beaming eyes, 
Proclaim a soul's release, 

That ne'er in dying dies ! 
Raise not a wailing note 

For him who now is free 
A banner well might float 

With shout of victory. 

" He fought the Christian's fight 
And wears the victor's crown, 



A DAY OF DABKNESS, 165 

And on a throne of light 

Is with his Lord set down. 
Not for himself alone 

Truth's banner he unfurled, 
The conflict was his own, 

His victory for the world. 

" But who are those that stand — 

Those stalwart men in tears? 
Ah, 'tis his much loved band 

Of swarthy mountaineers : 
He won them for his Lord, 

And tamed each savage breast 
By Christ's all conquering word, 

And led them to his rest. 
Yea, weep, oh mountain men, 

Around tliat marble brow : 
Ah, who o'er hill and glen 

Shall light your watch-fires now?" 



IN MEMOEIAM 

OF 

HENEY C. MAKSTON. 

" Let the hills bow in grief for the minstrel departed, 
Whose viol and voice could the savages tame ; 
The wildest of the tribes may lament broken-hearted, 

The friend of Assam they can never more claim. 
Yet joy to those hill men whose spirits he gladdened j 

His feet on the mountains had beauty to them ; 
Though his flight for a season their hearts may have sad- 
dened 
In his * crown of rejoicing ' will each be a gem. 



166 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN- CHIEF. 

*' He could not grow weary of work for the Master, 

While the heathen around him were shrouded in gloom, 
And the plague with its terrors was pleading the faster 

For aid to the dying and hope in the tomb. 
He could not grow weary, for love, the evangel, 

Eefreshing his zeal, it could never abate ; 
And death could not conquer, but came like an angel, 

To post him to heaven and open the gate." 

On his tombstone are inscribed the following 
words : 

" If life be not in length of days, 
In silver locks or furrowed brow, 
But living to a Saviour's praise — 
How few have lived so long as thou I " 



CHAPTEE XIX. 

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS. 

*' It is not dark, that's dark alone 
For this our little earthly while ; 
It is not bright, whose smiling sun 
Illumes the day it shines upon 
With else than an immortal smile. 

" We know not till the middle day, 
What tokens best befit the dawn ; 

The clouds that weep our morn away 

Fit, oft, for heaven's serenest ray, 

When the full strength of life comes on. 

" Oh, say not that the life is blest. 

That brightens most our earthly years ; 
Deem not that life is sorely pressed, 
That wrings not from a changeless breast 
An immortality of tears ! " 

SIX months after Henry's death I wrote this let- 
ter home. I had stayed on with the " much- 
loved mountaineers." Indeed, I could not find it 
in my heart to leave them : 

"God has in tender mercy remembered his 
precious promises to the widow and the fatherless. 
This season of thick darkness has revealed to me 

(167) 



168 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEf. 

worlds of light I never saw before. Stilly at times 
the sense of loss and loneliness is almost over- 
whelming, almost too heavy to be borne, exiled as 
I am from the loved ones of mv native land. 

" I regret that I have been unable to write to 
you oftener. But my hands have been very full 
of work, for the whole care of the mission has 
been upon me. I have assisted the native preach- 
ers in planning and arranging their sermons, have 
had the charge of the Bible scholars on Sunday 
and twelve week-day schools, besides caring for 
the sick and suffering among us. 

" I am happy to tell you that I and the children 
have been perfectly well, and I have had a most 
excellent ayah to take care of them. 

" Forty young men are now holding scholarships 
in our Hill Tribe Normal School and are receiving 
each 52 rupees ($25) per annum. From this sum 
they clothe and feed themselves and buy their 
school-books and stationery. They cannot live lux- 
uriously on this sum, and they economize closely on 
food and clothes that they may have money to buy 
books. They are wonderfully eager to learn, and 
Henry seems to have imparted his own ardent 
love for knowledge into every one of these young 
men. In the midst of all their poverty they al- 
ways manage to have a few pice for those who 
have never heard of Christ our Lord. 

" The government inspector of schools made a 



LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS. m 

careful examination of the standing of these pupils 
last week, and thus reports his opinion of it : ^ I 
visited the Hill Tribe Normal School on Monday. 
You are aware that this was my second visit to the 
school this year. As before, I was very much 
pleased with the school : the numbers had increased 
considerably since my previous visit, and there was 
evidently great interest taken by the lads in their 
work. I have formed a good opinion of the 
teacher's attainments and of his power of teaching. 
Allow me to suggest that more attention be given 
by the pupils to dictation and geography. Permit 
me to assure you that as long as I am at the head 
of the educational department of this province, any 
assistance you may need shall be afforded by my- 
self and my subordinates.' 

" I hear on every hand good reports from the 
young men who are teaching and preaching on the 
hills around about our mission station, and one 
after another is being gathered into the fold of the 
Good Shepherd. All the young men of the Nor- 
mal School are now professing Christians. When 
they saw their beloved missionary teacher die, 
they said : ^A religion that can make a man live 
as he lived, and die as he died, is the religion for 
us.' And six of these young men have taken upon 
them the work of preaching the gospel that they 
may in some measure fill the wide gap left here by 



170 KORNO 8IGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEP, 

Henry's death. And Habe and Korno Siga seem 
to have been consecrated anew. 

"As for my own plans for the future, I can only 
say to you, that so long as God gives health to me 
and to my children, I do not see how I can leave 
this my chosen work, until I must do so in order 
to attend to the education of my children. At 
least my path of duty is plainly set before my eyes 
to remain until some one shall come to take up the 
work here ; and I am sure I am happier in this 
work, so dear to my beloved one, and the work to 
which my own heart has been solemnly pledged 
even from my childhood's days. So please say to 
all who are interested in these hill tribe people, that 
I hope they will not withhold their hearts from 
praying nor their hands from giving, because the 
voice of Mr. Marston is silent. Remembering 
the sore bereavement which has come upon this 
mission, let more earnest and unceasing prayers be 
offered for its prosperity, that God will adopt all 
these orphaned ones into his own family, and get 
to himself a great name among his people." 

I trust I may not be regarded as egotistical if 
I quote here the testimony of the secretary of our 
Missionary Society in regard to my work at this 
period : " Mrs. Marston was at first completely 
overwhelmed by the death of her husband, but, 
rising from her great sorrow, she grasped with a 
steady hand the helm of the mission, and she has 



LIGHT m TEE DARKNESS. 171 

Wisely and bravely held it ever since. This work 
with a woman at its head is at once unique and 
beautiful in every respect." 

" I said once, * Dark and cold, 
Ah, cold and dark, the grave to which we tend. 
Where lover parts from lover, friend fiom friend, 

And life's brief tale is told. 
With its pathetic ending, " Dust to dust." ' 

" Now, with a new-born faith and loving trust, 

I say, * The grave is blest : ' 
Oh, call it dark no more, since he is laid 
In its still depths, whose life a sunshine made, 

In good deeds manifest. 
To cheer the gloom of sorrow and despair, 
And pour its bright beams round him everywhere. 

His blameless life from mean ambitions free, 
What loved the right it dared to do and be, 

Lessons sublime did give 

Of a true nobleness," 



CHAPTER XX. 

woman's work for woman. 

IN the spring of 1870 there came to my home in 
Assam one of those sweet angels of mercy sent 
out by the Woman's Missionary Societies of 
America. Miss Margaret Brown was the daughter 
of a most honored missionary, and she came to us 
filled with a woman's tender pity for the seckided, 
degraded women of India. 

She was bright and intelligent, highly educated 
and truly consecrated to her work. Most heartily 
she entered into all earnest plans for reaching the 
high-caste women in the Zenanas, and she had 
breadth and tact sufficient to make an effectual 
entrance there. These women are graceful and 
attractive in appearance and exceedingly fond of 
ever}i;hing pretty and attractive, and INIargaret 
took advantage of this trait in offering to teach 
them all kinds of beautiful needle- work and fancy 
articles. And as she went from house to house 
among them, she always carried her Bible and 
liymn-book, and faithfully taught these ignorant 
ones the way of eternal life. 

Her presence in our girls' schools was a benedic- 
(172) 



WOMAN'S WORK FOR WOMAN. 173 

tion, and her pure unaffected love of all good 
things was to these poor girls an inspiration and an 
example. Daily did I "thank God that there was 
such a society of women, to send out such valuable 
lielj)ers to those who were already overburdened 
with an accumulation of work. How much my 
children loved this beautiful woman, who was to 
them both teacher and companion ! 

I think our people in America can hardly 
realize ^vhat a good work there is to be done among 
the women and girls of India by educated, Chris- 
tian ladies. Fully to realize the imj)ortauce and 
magnitude of this work one must live in India, 
and know the social status of East Indian life. I 
could not believe, until I entered the high-caste 
home and saw how the women were treated, that 
human beings brought up in the nineteenth century 
could think it right to treat women so cruelly. 
The Brahmin Shasters are largely to blame for 
this state of things ; there is nothing so unreason- 
able and stubborn as a false religion, and a corrupt 
priesthood can give almost any meaning to a com- 
mand which in itself may be harmless. For in- 
stance, in the ancient books of Vedaism and Brah- 
minism there is no command for the burning of 
widows, but the text says, " When a man dies let 
his widow or widows put on the dun-colored gar- 
ment peculiar to the widow ; let her also put off 
all her jewels, and ascend up into her house and 



174 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

consecrate herself to the memory of her husband." 
But a corrupt priesthood have changed the word 
housCj which in the Sanscrit language is very simi- 
lar to the word fi^^e, and have made the command 
that she shall ascend up into the fire, i. e., offer 
herself upon the funeral pile. The priests used to 
stand by and receive the jewels as these poor 
women ascended the pile ; and when the English 
government forever put a stop to this most cruel 
religious rite, the priests Avept and wailed, for the 
hope of their gain in filthy lucre was gone. 
Women in India are punished by their husbands, 
by divers beatings and by the rubbing of red 
pepper in their eyes. I have often had my 
righteous soul vexed within me by the cool indif- 
ference with which the men would regard the 
agonizing screams of their wives under such tor- 
ture. 

If a Hindoo woman suffers much in giving 
birth to her child, her husband and all of her 
family take that as a positive evidence that she has 
not been a virtuous woman, and Avith cruel blows 
they will stand over her and command her to con- 
fess who her guilty paramour is. More than once 
have I known a woman under such circumstances 
to confess to a sin of which she has never been 
guilty. No gentleman physician is ever allowed 
to see these high-caste women in their times of 
sickness and suffering. Hence the great need of 



WOMAN'S WORK FOR WOMAN, 175 

lady physicians who may minister to these much 
abused but lovable women. That there should be 
such a physician at every mission station in India 
is a most needed arrangement, and Lady Duffer in, 
realizing the great need of Hindoo women, has 
nobly organized an association in which the Hin- 
doo gentlemen of wealth are now co-operating by 
contributing generously to its support. Such 
measures as these will work great good in India, 
and will call forth the profound gratitude, to a 
Christian nation, of all Hindoo women. 

One night as I was encamped in a Hindoo vil- 
lage, I heard at midnight the wailing of a woman, 
and taking one of the Christian men with me I set 
out to ascertain the cause of her sorrow. I found 
one of the low-caste Hindoo women seated on the 
ground with a dead baby clasped to her breast, 
while she rocked herself to and fro. These were 
the words of her lamentation : " Oh, Ram, 
Krishna, Shiva and all Hindoo gods, can you not 
tell me where my child is gone ? It smiles no 
more upon me ; when I call it, it answers me not 
again. Whither has its spirit fled? Into what 
form of beast or reptile has its spirit entered ? Is 
there no power, good or evil, that can tell me 
where to search now for my child ? Has it entered 
into a toad or a snake ? " With this last question 
she shuddered with fear and beat upon her breast 
and tore her hair in agony of despair. I sat down 



176 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

beside her and told her of the Christian woman's 
hope : that when our little ones die, we think of 
them as forever happy, as being in a lovely home 
where a Father moi-e tender and loving than any 
mother on earth can be, provides for their every 
want : where they shall hunger no more, neither 
thirst any more, and where the intense heat of the 
sun shall never more trouble them. I told her 
too of the Christian woman's faith that she shall 
meet her child, who is called dead, in that beauti- 
ful country. 

" How can that be ? " she asked with a wonder- 
ing look in her dark eyes. " Our Hindoo religion 
teaches that women have no souls until they are 
honored by transmigration with a man's body. 
How, then, can a woman enter by death into such 
a beautiful spirit-land ? " 

I tried to tell her of what Christ's religion had 
done for woman — how Christ had called her, 
daughter, and given her positive assurance that 
she had a place in the paradise of the good where 
they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but 
are as the angels. 

" How long has it been since the women of your 
country knew of such a religion ? " 

^^ More than eighteen hundred years have passed 
since Christ was made manifest in the flesh," I 
replied, "and our women have heard the story 
from their earliest infancy." 



W03fAN'S WORK FOR WOMAN. 177 

" What have they been doing this long time that 
they have not sent teachers before to tell us poor 
Hindoo women of such a blessed religion — ^a re- 
ligion that allows mothers to hope to see their dead 
babies again, and does not send their spirits into 
snakes and horrid beasts ? '^ 

How glad I was to tell her that the women of 
America and England were at last earnestly en- 
gaged in sending teachers everywhere to women 
who had not heard of this better way. 

Miss Brown and I spent happy, useful years to- 
gether, until the time when I was compelled to take 
my children from a climate where they no longer 
could thrive, and place them where they could have 
the bracing air of a temperate zone, and the educa- 
tional advantages of a civilized and Christian coun- 
try. Other workers, noble, earnest men and women, 
came to take Mr. Marston's and my place, and I 
bade a tearful farewell to that much loved band of 
native Christians and ^^ swarthy mountaineers." 

Our gentle Margaret Brown stayed on at her 
post until the " cholera god " came and claimed her 
too as its victim ; and a friend of hers thus beauti- 
fully writes of her death : 

" God's angels keep 
His watch o'er those who wake and sleep ; 
E'en death, through his providing care, 
Will plant the seed whose fruitage fair 
Of ransomed souls in years to come 
Shall swell the reaper's ' Harvest Home.' 



178 KORNO SIGA, THE 310 UN TAIN CHIEF. 

" Yet land bereaved, beloved, for thee 
Thy children's tears fall silently. 
The sickle dropped, the grain unbound 
Stands whitening all the fertile ground, 
While scattered laborers strong in faith 
Toil on through sufferings unto death. 

"Oh, shall the anguish and the tears, 
The martyr lives of other years, 
Whose agony of soul was given 
To lift thy sons from earth to heaven, 
Bring forth their future fruit in naught 
But tender memory, reverent thought ? 

" No, the dear ashes scattered wide 
By Orient and by Western tide. 
Cry, * Speed the torch from hand to hand, 
Till hut and fane illumined stand : 
Till warrior, priest and devotee 
In one glad worship bend the knee.' 

" And let the sound of Sabbath bell 
Over thy mountain barriers swell, 
' Till eastward meet the westward wave. 

And in far isle and desert cave 
That faith be held, that praise be sung, 
Which knows no bound of clime or tongue." 



CHAPTER XXI. 

HOMEWARD BOUND. 

A the years had passed, my heart had become 
S more and more bound up in my work for the 
people of Assam. 

Their weakness and frail moral composition had 
all the more aA^akened my lively sympathy and 
tender affection ; even as a mother often finds her 
heart going out most to the sickly or wayward 
child. But I loved my own flesh and blood 
better than all else of an earthly nature, and I 
knew that I had no right to sacrifice my children's 
highest interests for the sake of helping the 
Assamese. Neither Mr. Marston nor Christ 
would ask or desire me to do that. For two hot 
seasons Paul had suffered greatly from a disease 
which seemed impossible to cure, and I feared it 
might become chronic if I did not get him away 
from Assam before a third hot season came on. 
European children thrive well in Assam until they 
come to be ten or twelve years of age. 

When our dear people of Assam learned that 
we were about to leave them, they gathered for a 
farewell meeting. They came from the hills and 

(179) 



180 KOENO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CBIEF, 

plains^ and stayed about the mission compound for 
days. They wrote poems and farewell letters, and 
offered resolutions of regret. I have these poems 
and letters yet, and shall always keep them as 
legacies of affection from a people I worked for. 
Some of these are in the hill people's language, 
some in Assamese and a few in English. One of 
the English letters from a young Brahmin whom 
I had instructed for a time in English, commences 
thus : " Most venerable Madam : One of your 
ancient pupils, Moses, whom you so graciously 
taught the English language, writes to tell you 
how sorry he is that you are to leave our Assam 
country." 

For the w^ord venerable he meant respected, and 
for ancient pupil he meant former pupil. 

One mountain chief brought his son and wished 
to give him to me that I might have him educated 
in a Christian country, saying that he himself was 
too old to change his religion, but he wanted 
Sarlok to be just such a man as Mr. Marstonwas. 
The dear native converts and the pupils of my 
school wept as though their hearts would break, 
and Korno Siga, as spokesman for all the rest, 
said : " We shall miss you and mourn for you, and 
every cold season we shall go to the brow of our 
highest hill and look far off* on the plains to see if 
you are returning to us. AVe shall never lie down 
to sleep at night or arise from our beds in the 



II03IEWARD BOUND. 181 

morning without thinking of you and your 
precious children, and offering a prayer for your 
happiness and safe return to us. We shall watch, 
as the weeks pass away, for your footsteps on the 
mountains. The Father above took the Marston 
Saheb to live with himself; surely he will not 
think best to bereave us forever of the presence of 
Mem Saheb and the babes.'' 

Another of our native people addressed me in 
the following parting words : " Beloved teacher : 
From the land of the setting sun did your 
husband and yourself come to teach us of the 
divine Christ. After eight years of earnest 
work in our behalf the much beloved Saheb, Mr. 
Marston, went to heaven. His grave shall be 
tenderly watched and cared for during your 
absence, and month after month shall we gaze far 
down the Brahmapootra river to see if you are 
returning to us. It was a sore trial for us to lose 
our father, and now our mother goes from us. 
May your children grow a foot a day so that you 
may soon leave them in America and return to 
your sorrowing and more needy children of 
Assam.'' 

At length the parting words were all said, and 
as far as we could discern the figures of our friends, 
they waved their adieus to us as they watched our 
boat from the banks of the river. None but a 
missionary can understand the deep affection 



182 KORNO 8IGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF, 

Avhich binds the converts made from heathenism 
to their Christian teachers. And the missionary 
grieves over the fall of one of these little ones 
almost as deeply as over his own flesh and blood. 

We took passage on a steamer to Golunda. 
Here the children for the first time saw a locomo- 
tive, and little Henry was much frightened at it. 
Clinging to my hand he asked if that was an 
Assamese devil. 

\Ye remained in Calcutta two weeks and en- 
joyed sight-seeing in the City of Palaces, and 
spent several evenings in the Eden gardens ad- 
miring the beautiful variety of tropical plants and 
the ornamental architecture of the beautiful 
Burmese pagoda, which was brought from Prome 
and reconstructed in the Eden gardens in 1856. 

The Post-office on the west side of Delhousie 
square is a magnificent building, and the Govern- 
ment House is of very imposing appearance. 
Commodious galleries connect the four wings. 
This is the residence of the Governor-General, and 
affords ample accommodation for public entertain- 
ment, levees and all official business. Every one 
who has visited Calcutta has doubtless noticed the 
Adjutant birds standing for hours on the top of 
this building. The Ghauts, the Musjeeds, and 
the monuments of Calcutta aid very materially in 
making it a city of beautiful appearance. The 
bishop's palace and the imposing cathedral of St. 



HOMEWARD BOUND. 183 

Paul are also fine buildings. Here we heard the 
grand organ, which cost about eight thousand 
dollars, and looked upon the colossal statue of 
Bishop Heber, which occupies a place in the 
northern transept. As we enter under the organ, 
the choir in its whole dimensions, with the window 
by Benjamin West, representing the Crucifixion, 
bursts upon our view. 

After attending service at the cathedral, our 
Paul expressed himself thus emphatically : '' I 
don't like that kind of church service ; it is six 
times and five times, and five times and six times, 
and I can't keep run of it.'' He was confused 
by the frequent kneeling and arising, and this was 
his manner of expressing his dislike of such a 
service. As for myself, I enjoyed it most 
thoroughly. 

The shipping of Calcutta presents a very fine 
appearance. During a severe cyclone while I Avas 
in Assam sixty-five large vessels were washed 
ashore, and great destruction of property was the 
result. The name Calcutta is written Kali Ghautta 
in the Hindoostani language, and means the land- 
ing place of the goddess Kali, the wife of Shiva, 
the god of destruction. Her temple formerly 
stood on the river bank. Fort William is the 
largest fort in India, and will accommodate fifteen 
thousand soldiers, and cost about $10,000,000. 
There are over six hundred cannon kept here. 



184 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

The dungeon of Fort William, called tlie Black 
Hole of Calcutta, where one hundred and twenty- 
three brave British soldiers were suffocated in 
1756 by Surajah Dowlah, the Indian ruler of 
Bengal, is a place familiar to history, and all phil- 
anthropic hearts throb with sympathy as they 
recall the days of the birth-throes of the British 
empire in India. 

Below Calcutta, on tlie right bank as we descend 
the Hoogly, is Garden Eeech, one of the beautiful 
suburbs, with its elegant gardens and handsome 
European residences ; while on the left bank are 
the famous Botanical Gardens, with the celebrated 
banyan tree of immense size, whose ever increasing 
branches spread themselves, taking fresh root. 

We took passage in one of the fine steamers of 
the Peninsula and Oriental line via the Suez Canal 
to Southampton. The first stopping place was at 
Madras, a city of four hundred thousand people, on 
the Bay of Bengal. This city was founded by the 
English, and hence there are but few Hindoo tem- 
ples to be found here. But there are cathedrals, 
colleges, a museum, and an astronomical observa- 
tory. Our steamer was obliged to anchor two 
miles from the shore, as Madras has no harbor, 
and we could not get ashore, as the surf was so 
high that we did not deem the light, flat-bottomed 
boats (native name, masulahs) in which all must 



HOMEWARD BOUND. 185 

land, safe to intrust ourselves for such an ad- 
venture. 

Madras, like Calcutta, has its native town of 
squalor and narrow streets, but the streets of the 
European part of the city are wide and handsome, 
and there are many elegant private residences on 
each side of these boulevards. This city carries 
on a large trade, but not so large as Calcutta. The 
favorite evening drive of the foreign residents of 
Madras is called Mount Eoad, and leads from the 
city to Mount St. Thome, where the apostle 
Thomas is said to have been buried. The Gov- 
ernment House of Madras is a half oriental, half 
European palace, with spacious verandahs and 
Venetian blinds shutting out the heat of the sun. 

Point de Galle, at the extreme southern point 
of Ceylon, was our next sj^opping place. Here we 
took a carriage and drove through the spice groves 
and inhaled the '^ spicy breezes which blow soft 
o'er Ceylon's isle.'' There is a high cone among 
the mountains of Ceylon called Adam's peak, 
which is visited by many pilgrims, who climb the 
steep sides by means of a chain fastened at the 
top. On the top of this steep rock there is some- 
thing which looks like a footprint, and which the 
Buddhists say is a track of Buddha when he 
stepped from Ceylon to Siam. The Mohammedans 
think it is Adam's foot-mark when he was driven 
from the garden of Eden, hence the name Adam's 



186 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

peak. The uneducated Hindoos of Assam call 
the isle of Cejlon Loiikadeep, from the fact that 
they believe that Lonha, a great evil spirit, lives 
there, who devours every Hindoo who sets foot 
on its soil. The satin wood and the ebony are 
among the choice varieties of wood found in Cey- 
lon. The most useful of all the trees is the 
cocoanut palm, which supplies the native with food, 
drink, house utensils, garden fences, torches and 
oil. The cinnamon groves are numerous, and the 
bark is a chief article of export. The cinnamon 
plant W'hen growing wild is twenty or thirty feet 
high. Coffee is extensively cultivated. The inhabi- 
tants are Singalese, and the men have a curious cus- 
tom of wearing round tortoise-shell combs to keep 
their long hair from falling over their faces. 
Point de Galle is quite a, mart for turtles ; we had 
some twenty of the monsters on board our steamer, 
and it was wonderful the enormous quantities of 
w^at^r they required to be thrown over them every 
day. Our captain said he was taking them to 
England to be made into soup. I did not measure 
them, but think they must have averaged three 
feet VA width. All kinds of turtle-shell ware were 
brought on our steamer for sale, and eagerly bought 
by our passengers. Some of the combs and chains 
were very delicate and artistic in their mechan- 
ism. 

We next touched at Aden, a strongly fortified 



HOMEWARD BOUND. 187 

town belonging to Great Britain. It is in the 
southwest part of Arabia. Our ship dropped 
anchor at this port early in the morning, and the 
first sound we heard was the voice of a little boy 
in the adjoining cabin crying out to my little 
Henry : " Halloo, Henry, wake up ! there are lots 
of little boys in the water with hair just like 
yours." We looked out of the window and saw a 
number of native boys, black shiny little fellows 
with hair bleached by water and sun until the color 
was nearer like taify than anything else. Henry 
indignantly resented the assertion that his golden 
curls were to be likened to taffy, and very soiled 
taffy at that. The little taffy-headed boys come 
out in canoes and greet every steamer in order that 
they may dive for coin which the passengers throw 
to them in the water. They dive with wonderful 
agility, and often go underneath the large steamer 
and come up on the other side, displaying the new- 
found coin with exultant joy. It is an amusing 
sight, as these little glistening savages dive, to see 
for a while only the soles of their yellow feet, and 
after quite an interval their woolly pates emerging 
from the surface of the pale green water while the 
successful boy shows the shining coin between his 
teeth. For some reason, I know not what, the 
sharks never touch these little fellows. 

Aden was produced by volcanic eruptions. Its 
highest peak is about one thousand feet. The 



188 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

harbor is good, and large depots of coal and 
other supplies are kept here for the British navy 
and passenger vessels. Rain falls but seldom, 
most of the water supply being condensed sea- 
water. There are tanks for receiving the water in 
case the rain falls. Aden is the gateway of the 
Red Sea, and our captain told us that the English 
were only one hour ahead of the French in taking 
possession of this, to them, important place. The 
heat was intense in the Red Sea, which we now 
entered, and as the full rays of the sun rested 
upon the water the play of colors was beautiful 
indeed. In the Gulf of Suez, the water is green, 
and the bay is edged with a border of bright 
yellow sand, and the top of the mountain ranges 
is red. Beautiful, indeed, and grand was the 
effect of these three colors so artistically arranged. 
The Suez Canal, after ten years labor by thou- 
sands of workmen under the general superintend- 
ence of the distinguished engineer, M. Ferdinand 
de Lesseps, had but recently been opened, and our 
steamer made its way slowly, averaging al)out five 
miles an hour only. At Ismaila is a ferry across the 
canal to accommodate travellers from Jerusalem. 
Tliis road may have been the path Avhicli Joseph 
and Mary and the infant Jesus, took when fleeing 
into Egypt. Along the banks of the canal were 
many loaded camels driven by Arabs. I was 
much pleased with the little French cottages along 



H03IEWABD BOUND. 189 

the route of the canal, Avhich were occupied by 
those caring for the canal. Though surrounded 
by the wide waste of sand these French people, 
always remarkable for their love of the beautiful, 
had flowers and vines growing about and over 
their cottages. It was a sight most restful to the 
eye wearied by the arid waste. While making 
our way through the canal we had a splendid 
opportunity of witnessing the wonderful decep- 
tiveness of the mirage. Gazing out over the wide 
waste of burning sand, lovely lakes of water 
seemed spread out before us, and it was difficult 
to dispel the illusion. Even the most experienced 
camel-drivers are sometimes deceived by it, but 
our captain says the animals are never cheated in 
this Avay, as their sense of smell and other animal 
instincts always lead them aright. The Arabs call 
this illusion of the mirage the "sea that is not 
water." In India the mirage is sometimes called 
"the picture,'^ and the "minstrel's white lake.'' 
There is an old Indian legend which tells of a 
minstrel who, being deceived by the appearance of 
sparkling fresh water, emptied out the contents of 
his water-bottle that he might fill it from the 
limpid stream. As a consequence he perished 
with thirst, and the moral is expressed in our 
English proverb : "A bird in the hand is worth 
two in the bush." 

Port Said, with its long breakwater made of 



190 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

artificial boulders of concrete, is next reached. 
Here the soil is all sand, and the coast low and 
monotonous in the extreme. A crowd of bare- 
legged turbaned natives and a few ugly dogs 
were all the signs of animate life to be seen, and 
we were glad to strike out to sea and breathe 
the invigorating air of the Mediterranean. Here 
we laid aside our thin clothes, and wrapped our- 
selves in flannels and blankets. 

The city of Alexander the Great, bearing his 
illustrious name (Alexandria), next looms up be- 
fore us. Cleopatra's needles then stood in bold 
relief, marking the place where the temple of 
Csesar, the Csesarim, stood. In 1877 one of these 
was presented by Mehemet Ali to the British, and 
was taken to London. The other Ismail Pasha 
gave to the United States of America, and in 1880 
it was taken to New York. The red granite 
column known as Pompey's Pillar is Corinthian 
in its style of architecture, and is ninety-nine feet 
high, and makes a fine display as seen from the 
harbor. I have been told that a party of eight 
rollicking English sailors once flew a kite over the 
pillar and let it come down on the other side so 
that the string might fall from the top. They 
pulled up a rope with this string, and then the 
whole eight climbed to the top and drank punch 
and had a gay time, while the astonished Arabs 



HOMEWARD BOUND. 191 

gathered in a crowd to witness the strange and 
daring exploit. 

We spent one day at rocky Malta, and went to 
the old church of the Knights of St. John. We 
were told an amusing story of a young man who 
was overquick in arriving at conclusions, who 
when he visited this church saw the women all 
dressed in black, and concluded that the men had 
all been killed in the Crimean war, and their 
widows, clad in the weeds of mourning, Avere at 
the church praying for the repose of their 
husbands' souls. He berated the English govern- 
ment roundly for thus drafting into military ser- 
vice so large a portion of the male population of 
Malta. He was quite taken aback when he was told 
that the costume of all the native women was the 
black one he had seen every woman in the church 
have on. This old church is grandly beautiful, with 
its special chapels for each country which sent out 
Crusaders. The floor is paved with marble slabs, 
on each of which is the name and title of a 
knight. The pictures on the walls are many of 
them the work of the French nuns, and are ex- 
quisitely embroidered on canvas. We were shown 
one that was said to be made from the broken 
threads which were cast aside from the embroider- 
ing of a larger picture. The work was very fine, 
and the general effect very pleasing, showing that 



192 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

even broken threads can be used by one who has a 
wise and good plan from which to work. 

" God takes our broken threads, 
And works them in 
With his own grand design ; 
And in his sight 
All is complete 
Because begun with him." 

Malta had an additional interest to us as being 
the island w^here the apostle Paul landed, and 
w^here the barbarous people showed him " no little 
kindness." 

Great Britain's fortified rock, Gibraltar, en- 
gaged our next attention, but has been too often 
described by travellers to need any comment from 
me. This is said to be the only place in Europe 
were wild monkeys are found. 

Six weeks from the day w^e left Calcutta we set 
foot on British ground at Southampton, and were 
soon seated in the coach for London. We had 
enjoyed a pleasant voyage ; the cuisine, service and 
general attendance of our steamer were excellent. 
Ten days more passed and we were in our beloved 
native land, surrounded by friends from whom we 
had been long parted, and breathing in the June 
air made fragrant with roses. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

IMPEESSIONS OF AMERICA AFTER AN ABSENCE 
OF YEARS. 

PAINFULLY impressed was I upon reaching 
America, with the nervous haste which 
seemed to characterize every man, woman and 
child. I felt inclined to stop every one whom I 
met and ask if a house was on fire, and, if not, 
why such desperate speed and restlessness? It 
tired me to see no calm people ; nobody that had 
time for a social chat nor even time to eat their 
meals as they should be eaten. 

Another thing that impressed me was the vast 
increase in the number of patent medicines, and I 
was forced to the conclusion that my native people 
were either a very "unhealthy people, or a very 
unhappy people, for their ills are either real or 
imaginary.^' 

The immense foreign immigration which had gone 
on during my absence made me feel that our 
country was fast becoming the "pandemonium" of 
all nations. As I looked over the list of officers 
of our labor organizations I could find few 
English or American names, but Teutonic and 
Hibernian names everywhere abounded, and I was 
1? (193) 



194 KORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

forced to ask the question : " Do our American 
people look upon manual labor as a disgrace?" 
"Wlien the great railroad strike came on, it seemed 
to me but a just punishment to our people for 
having given over their great labor organizations 
into foreign hands. 

The increased number of suicides was a con- 
viction forced ujdou me, in spite of all my deter- 
mination to see only good in my dear native 
people. If the masses of our graduates from our 
public schools insist upon following after the pro- 
fessions, and a day dreaming idealism of wealth 
and high social position, how can we expect any- 
thing but hobbyists, cranks and insane hypochon- 
driacs ? Honest labor is the salvation of any race, 
and we can never expect to be a perfect people 
until we give up our wild pursuit of wealth 
gained by speculation and trickery, and learn to 
respect labor and the skilled artisan, and no longer 
give the highest social position to the millionaire, 
whether he has brains and morality or not. 

I look upon the opening of numerous schools 
of technology all over our land at the present time 
as the daAvning of an auspicious day, and hope 
that they may be crowded with pupils, while our 
law, medical and political aspirants may be re- 
duced to the few who are adapted to their pro- 
fessions, and who will do their work faithfully and 
v.ell. The disposition of the young people to take 



IMPBES8I0NS OF AMERICA. 195 

their marriage affairs into their own hands, and the 
consequent increase of divorce cases in our courts, 
was another thing that impressed me unfavorably 
on my return to my country. 

But there were also bright and cheering impres- 
sions ; the broad and liberal attitude of our 
churches in the way of frowning down human 
creeds and denominational bigotry, and the show- 
ing of true love and sympathy for all who bore 
the image of Christ, was one of the most inspiring 
of all these favorable impressions. My country- 
men had come nearer realizing the true idea of the 
Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man. 

This spirit showed itself in philanthropies 
broad and far reaching, extending even to the 
uttermost parts of the earth. " The kindly feel- 
ing, the desire to help, the increased skill which 
springs up under Christianity, as flowers and fruits 
grow in the sunshine,'^ were to me at once a refresh- 
ing and a solace. These things "are not miracles, 
but are better than miracles, as the prolonged sun- 
shine is better than the flash of lightning." I 
found the day laborer of my native land enjoying 
more books, libraries, railroads, telegraphs and 
newspapers, than the Rajahs and Ranis of India. 
At the present time the philanthropies of our 
United States amount to $120,000,000 annually, 
and care for orphans, waifs, insane, sick, little 
wanderers, cripples, drunken outcasts, and children, 



196 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

and those needing reformations; while we have 
forty-three institutions for the deaf and dumb 
which average 5,743 inmates annually; thirty 
blind asylums, with 2,178 annually taught and 
cared for ; and eleven institutions which care for 
idiots, with 1,781 yearly inmates. In New York 
city alone the charitable societies expend each year 
$4,000,000. Surely this is a showing of liberality 
such as no un-Christian country could ever 
exhibit. Add to these all that is being done in 
heathen lands through the instrumentality of 
American money and American workers, and we 
have reason to be proud of the record, and should 
strive still to further increase our philanthropic 
and Christian efforts. God forbid that our be- 
loved land should ever prove recreant to her high 
trust, and place herself on the side of agnosticism 
and atheism, for : 

" Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide 
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil 

side; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the 

bloom or blight. 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the 

right, 
And the chance goes by forever, 'twixt the darkness and the 

light." 

My children enjoyed the new and beautiful life 
that came to them with the June roses, under a sun 



IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 197 

that did not light upon them with a tropical heat, 
and the lovely Autumn tints, and with the frost 
and snow. 

Our national holidays were times of great in- 
terest to them, as they had known nothing of 
fire-crackers, Roman candles and sky-rockets in 
Assam. Their efforts at the English language 
were amusing, for, in spite of all my efforts, I 
had never been able to get them to speak English 
in Assam, and even when I would tell them a 
story in that language they would beg of me to 
talk to them in their own Assamese tongue. The 
termination for the future tenses in the Assamese 
language is ^6o, and when they wished to say " it 
will rain, snow or hail,'^ they would put it in the 
form of " rainibo," " snowibo '^ and " hailibo." 
And even after they learned the English words 
they would cling to the Assamese idioms and order 
of expression. Instead of saying, " Please, give 
me a drink of water," they would form the 
sentence thus : "To me, w^ater give, please." 
And instead of saying, "I don't like the cold 
weather," they would say, " I like cold weather, 
no, not so." The first anniversary of George 
Washington's birthday after our return excited 
little Henry's curious interest, and he asked me 
why it was that they did not have school that day. 
I told him because it was George Washington's 
birthday. He inquired in return if "George 



198 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

would have his washing done every day," adding 
that he hoped he would^ as he liked to play better 
than to go to school. When I explained to him 
all about the illustrious " father of his country/' 
and told him that he had long been dead, but that 
a grateful people loved to honor his memory, the 
little fellow only remarked, that George must have 
had a great deal of soiled linen if it had not all 
been washed yet. He could not get the name 
Washington into his little head, for he had never 
been used to hearing two names given to one 
person. 

The sensation of cold from handling ice and 
snow my children invariably called heat, and said 
they were " burnt with the ice.'' Before the end 
of the first winter at home, however, they had ad- 
justed themselves to their new surroundings, and 
had acquired the language so as to speak it with- 
out a brogue. 

As I review the years of my residence abroad, I 
am persuaded that they have been the golden days 
of my life as far as true usefulness is concerned ; 
and if you ask me to tell you in detail why the work 
of a missionary in India is grand and noble, let 
me answer you in the language of the British 
House of Commons : 

"Apart from their special duties as public 
preachers and pastors, the foreign missionaries 
constitute a valuable body of educators ; they 



IMFBESSIoks OF AMERTCA. 199 

Contribute greatly to the cultivation of the native 
languages and literature ; all who are resident in 
rural districts are appealed to for help of a medi- 
cal character. They have prepared hundreds of 
works suited both for schools and for general 
circulation in the fifteen most prominent languages 
of India, and in several other districts they are 
the compilers of several dictionaries and gram- 
mars. They have written important works on 
the native classics and the system of philosophy ; 
and they have largely stimulated the great increase 
of native literature prepared in recent years by 
educated native gentlemen. A great increase has 
taken place in the number of converts the last 
twenty years. They number now at least five 
hundred thousand. The government of India 
cannot but acknowledge the great obligation under 
which it is laid by these benevolent exertions of 
these six hundred missionaries, whose blameless 
lives and self-denying labors are infusing new 
vigor into the stereotyped life of the great popu- 
lations placed under English rule, and are prepar- 
ing them to be in every way better men and better 
citizens of the great empire in which they dwell/' 
And to this let me add the testimony of one who 
is well prepared to speak on this subject: "The 
wide diffusion of Christian knowledge; the 
arousing of the Hindoo mind from its long torpor 
to the earnest discussion of the merits and claims 



200 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIER 

of Christianity ; the abolition of Suttee, of female 
infanticide, and hook-swinging ; the loosing of the 
bonds of caste, the diminished influence of Brah- 
minical powers, and the earnest desire and prac- 
tical efforts put forth for the education of women, 
all show that India's long night of superstition 
and moral ignorance is passing away, and the 
dawn of a glorious day already at hand/' 

It is an honor to any human being to have had 
a hand and heart in this great work of saving a 
nation. 



CHAPTEE XXIII. 

WHY RETURN TO ASSAM? 

WHEN I left my home in the beautiful green 
valley of the Brahmapootra river, I little 
thought that more than a decade and a half of years 
would pass away before I should return thither. 

But finding that my children required my pres- 
ence and care, and fully realizing that no higher 
and nobler life could possibly engage my heart 
than a mother^s mission for her children bereft of 
a father, I have stayed on, year after year, and 
have been very happy in my work and my 
surroundings. The time has come when my 
fostering care is no longer needed for my children, 
since they have come to fill their own places in 
the busy world, among the bread-winners, where 
they are serving Christ and his cause ; and they 
cheerfully consent for me to go back to my un- 
finished work in India. 

When one has for years pursued a certain line 
of work, amid surroundings pleasant and satis- 
factory, in their own beloved land, the question very 
naturally suggests itself, " Why make a change ? 
Why go to a foreign land and to a heathen 

(201) 



202 KOENO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

people ? Are the reasons which lead to this change 
sufficiently weighty to warrant such a step?" 
Many times have these questions been put to me 
since I decided to return, and I deem it but due 
to the dear friends of my native land to answer 
them honestly and frankly in this closing chapter 
of my book. 

First. My presence is desired there ; T have the 
confidence and affection of the natives ; and their 
language is almost as familiar to me as my 
own mother tongue. 

When I was left alone in the mission after my 
husband^s death, a company of native women, 
fearing I would be lonely, came night after night, 
bringing with them their babies, and stayed with 
me. It was their way of showing their affection 
and sympathy, and I most thoroughly appreciated 
their motives. Nor could I feel alone with a 
dozen babies in the house besides my own little 
children. Many incidents such as the following 
also go to prove that these poor Assamese women 
loved me and wished me to live among them. A 
hill tribe woman whose son had been in our 
Normal School, and who had heard INIr. Marston 
preach Christ's words on the mountains, on hearing 
of the death of the preacher, came eleven days' 
journey through dense jungles infested with wild 
and savage animals, that she might mingle her 
tears with mine. On reaching my bungalow she 



WS:r BETtJRN TO ASSAM? 203 

said, with tears streaming down her cheeks, '^I 
know what it is to lose one's right arm. I, too, 
am a widow, and I have come from my mountain 
home to tell you how deeply I sympathize with 
you.'' 

When I bade adieu to the company of native 
pupils, Bible women, school-teachers, native 
preachers, and Hindoo and hill people wlio had 
been about me during the twelve years of my so- 
journ in Assam, they were sorely grieved at the 
parting, and Korno Siga was spokesman for the 
whole company in words which I have given you 
in a previous chapter. Sixteen years have passed, 
and month by month he and his waiting company 
ask almost piteously : "Are you not coming back 
very soon?'' 

Second. I am needed in Assam a hundredfold 
more than here in my own land. Teachers and 
physicians crowd against each other here on every 
hand. There I shall have the consciousness that 
I am doing a work which would otherwise be left 
undone, for the harvest is great and the laborers 
are few and scattered. I could tell heart-rend- 
ing stories of the sad condition of our dark 
Hindoo sisters who are compelled to live on in 
sickness and suifering because the custom of the 
country forbids them to be seen by gentlemen 
physicians. The Christian lady physician has, 
therefore, a wider field of usefulness in India than 



204 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

in America. When I left Assam there was not, in 
all that province, a Zenana in which I was not 
cordially welcomed, and I was free to talk to those 
poor, ignorant, though beautiful women, of the 
grand truths of a saving Christianity. By kind 
and patient attention to their physical needs, by 
attending them in their hours of sickness and 
pain, and by an expressed practical interest in 
their homes and home life, one may so gain their 
confidence that they will listen to the more im- 
portant things which pertain to their souls' eternal 
welfare. Lady Dufferin is doing a most noble work 
in India in establishing lady physicians who shall 
take charge of hospitals for women and children, 
and train a corps of native nurses to care for the 
sick of their own sex. 

Our lady missionary physicians are doing a still 
more important work, caring for both soul and body. 
And our Indian sisters begin to appreciate the 
value of this work which meets a long-felt need. 
I candidly believe that I am needed there for just 
such work as this. 

Third, I return to Assam because I believe it 
to be the duty and privilege of individuals, as well 
as of nations, to work out their highest destiny. 
Service for the divine Christ is, I believe, the 
highest destiny of mortals, as well as of angels. 
" Life is the exertion of power,'' and spiritual life, 
which is the highest form of life, is the exertion 



WHY RETURN TO ASSAM? 205 

of spiritual power to benefit humanity. This 
spiritual power is generated in the heart of every- 
one who drinks of the fountain of eternal life, and 
is made a new creature in Christ. Feeling as- 
sured that my life will be of more service to the 
Saviour's cause in Assam than it can be here, and 
believing that the line of my highest destiny lies 
in this direction, I again turn my face to the 
Orient. 

Fourthy and most important of all my reasons. 
I return to Assam because I believe that Chris- 
tianity is the vital power for the salvation of her 
sons and daughters. Assured that Christ's re- 
ligion has in it an infinitely higher morality and 
spirituality, and consequently an infinitely greater 
power to save humanity than Buddhism, Brah- 
minism, or any New Brotherhood of Robert 
Elsmere, I count it a joy and a privilege to bear 
the news of a crucified and risen Jesus to those 
who grope in thick darkness. 

Not that I think that God has left himself 
without witnesses during all these years in India. 
I cannot believe that. But as Buddhism, the so- 
called " Light of Asia," is agnosticism and athe- 
ism, surely this religion has not been God's best 
manifestation. And as Brahminism is gross idolatry 
and licentiousness, we can hardly call this, God's 
chosen means of manifesting himself to India. 
The apostle Paul tells us plainly in the first 



206 EORNO SIGA, THE 3I0UNTAIN CHIEF. 

chapter of Romans, that God's eternal power and 
Godhead have been clearly shoAvn to them, so that 
they are without excuse. And we are told also in 
the first chapter of John's Gospel that the true 
light lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world. But it is a sad fact, made very manifest 
to those who have lived among heathen peoples, 
that the truth of God has been changed by thena 
into falsehood, and their hearts have been darkened 
by sin until the " unknown God " needs to be de- 
clared to them with the earnest power which 
Christ's life and atonement can alone make 
effectual to their salvation. 

The missionary work is not simply a philan- 
thropy, nor is it simply an inspiration caught from 
the life of a pure noble man who lived eighteen 
hundred years ago, and suffered martyrdom for his 
principles by death on the Roman cross. If I 
believed that Christ was only a good man, I should 
not consider it my duty to leave my children and 
my beloved native land to go to Assam. Sacredly 
and reverently I believe that " God commended 
his love toward us in that while we were yet sin- 
ners Christ died for us," and that " whosoever 
believeth on him shall not perish but have ever- 
lasting life." 

This Jesus who is the " Light of the World," in 
whom is the hope of all nations, has said, ^' go teach 



WHY RETURN TO ASSAMf 207 

all nations/^ and it is for us to obey the heavenly 
vision. 

We would esteem no man a true patriot who 
would refuse to represent his country in a foreign 
court ; we would consider no man a true lover of 
his country who would refuse to fight his country's 
battles when her voice called loudly for his help. 
Even so, should the soldiers of Christ hold them- 
selves ready for any service their commander may 
demand of them, whether that service be at home 
or in a foreign country. The true missionary 
spirit is one of lowliness and ready service. 

By obedience to the divine will, by an earnest 
sympathy with the common people, by going on 
his missions, by giving freely our property and 
ourselves to advance his cause, thus can we show 
forth the true missionary spirit, in whatever land 
we are called to do our life-work. 

And lastly. I return to Assam because I ear- 
nestly desire to add my mite toward carrying on the 
work so nobly begun by our martyr heroes who 
have fallen in the battle. From the days of the 
sainted Thomas, who died when but within sight 
of his mission field in Assam, down to the present 
time, there have been noble men and women who 
have joyfully given their full ten talents, their 
time, and their most faithful service to this work, 
and have laid down their lives for it. They have 
accomplished a great work, but that mission is 



208 KORNO SIGA, THE MOUNTAIN CHIEF. 

now in a very needy condition and calls loudly 
for reinforcement. I cannot call the work of these 
Assamese martyrs an unfinished work, for is not 
"man immortal until his work is done?" But we 
have an unfinished work there, and a divine ob- 
ligation rests upon us to do what we can do 
toAvards its completion. 

Scattered laborers strong in faith are toiling on 
amid the whitened fields of Assam, while ever and 
anon one falls by the way, and there seem no 
workers ready to seize the fallen sickle and gather 
the grain. Pray ye the Lord of the harvest to 
send forth more laborers into this most needy field. 

" Hark, the voice of Jesus calling, 
Who will go and work to-day ? 

Fields are white, the harvest waiting, 
Who will bear the sheaves away? 

Loud and long the Master calleth, 

Rich reward he offers you : 

Who will answer, gladly saying, 

Here am I, O Lord, send me." 

" Why return to Assam ? " 

First. My presence is desired there. 

Second. I am needed there. 

TJiird. Service for Christ in that land lies in 

the line of my highest destiny. 
•Fourth. Christianity is the vital and saving 
power of all nations, and Christ bids 
us, " Go teach all nations." 



WHY RETURN TO ASSAM? 209 

Fifth. The noble army of martyrs who have 
begun a great work in Assam call 
upon us to carry that work to a 
glorious completion. 

To the beloved friends who have made my stay 
in America so delightsome, I commend my chil- 
dren and my lovely little grand-daughter, while I 
turn my face to the land of the Rising Sun, to my 
husband's grave, to my unfinished work, and to 
that faithful company, who, with Korno Siga, wait 
and watch for me on the brow of the hill. 

From thence I may send back some notes of 
"Assam revisited/' 
14 



THE END. 



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